democracy alert

This article is adapted from a talk with power point given to U3A Deepene on March 15th 2017 by past president of VicTas branch of Sustainable Population Australia, now secretary, Jill Quirk, who is also now the secretary of Protectors of Public Lands Victoria. The talk explored the noticeable effects of rapid population growth and compared some past and current projections for Melbourne’s population to mid–century and beyond, considering what Melbourne on current trends might be like in 50 years. These comparisons, not usually available, make it clear how Victorian governments have increasingly snowed citizens with every successive plan for Melbourne.

Why are people interested in population now ?

When change happens slowly people are less likely to notice but as it speeds up they do. Older people will notice change more as they have a longer perspective.

Melbourne’s’ population is now growing by about 100,000 per year. Melbourne’s cars also increase by about 100,000 per year. In the year 2014-5 when Melbourne’s population grew by 91,600 or 2.1%, Hobart’s population grew by 1,700 or 0.8%. Population growth thus would not be noticed nearly as much there where growth is so much slower and from a much smaller base, so smaller numbers are added.

We all now realise that Melbourne’s population is growing very fast. In the last 20 years the subject of population growth has gone from a hidden topic to one that has constant exposure. In fact there is little on the news and radio programs that does not relate to our city as a fast growing place.

What sorts of things are mentioned in the media?

Traffic, planning issues, public transport – e.g. Railway crossing elimination, new underground and the tension this causes with those who want to protect the trees; suburban sprawl , housing affordability, pressure on schools , medical services, etc.
Less often now – but still relevant – water, wild life, environment.
In the city and suburbs changes can be seen in the very physical nature of the city. They directly affect us.

What do we observe in our daily lives?

In established inner and middle suburbs of Melbourne one sees changes, which are usually to accommodate more people per unit of land. We see demolitions of houses to make way for much denser living arrangements. Residents capitalize by clubbing together to sell a few houses in one street so that higher density accommodation can be built and a larger profit made from the land. It would not be possible for such profits to be made if the population were not rising rapidly. It is population pressure on limited land that causes this phenomenon. Such actions are actually extremely anti-social as they mean doing a dis-service to one’s neighbours and then disappearing!

For those who live further out especially in areas known as “growth corridors", they observe new roads being built, farms being sold, market gardens disappearing, trees and natural areas, wild life habitat being sacrificed.
packenham-growth-corridor2.jpg
We are all aware of increased traffic , pressure on house prices and affordability problems, pressure on services such as hospitals and schools, greater regulation, particularly parking.

Why is Melbourne’s population growing so fast?

Factors:
1. Overseas immigration has increased significantly since the 1990s.
2. The population tends to congregate in the capital cities despite Australia’s “boundless plains”. At one stage, during the mining boom, Perth was the fastest growing city in Australia and at another stage it was Sydney. Now Melbourne takes the dubious prize. Since Premier Jeff Kennett's election, Melbourne has been designated a region in need of migration, making it easier to bring relatives or skilled migrants – however defined – employees of wide variety.
3. In 2017 Melbourne is an economic centre where compared with the country town and regional centres there is more work. In regional Victoria, farms have been vastly mechanized and are increasingly corporatized. It is hard to make a living from a family farm. Costs have ballooned and there is terrific global competition. Unlike in the past, banks are reluctant to finance farms. Bank lending used to be long term – now there are so many competing uses for money – e.g. urban real estate. Agricultural land is only worthwhile on large scale when sold to often foreign interests.
4. There is a world- wide drift of population to the cities.
5. This means that migrants to Australia also gravitate to the major cities, especially Melbourne. This has driven up the price of land in those cities. It is self-perpetuating as it encourages speculation and land and property banking in a vicious circle of land value inflation. You can read Melbourne's population growth almost as Victoria’s population growth and the larger part, over half of this growth, is from overseas migration.

Is there any problem with the current rate of population growth in Australia?

Australia is a large land mass, but if you look out of the window of the plane next time you fly over it, you will see that the vastness of Australia is a desert. It is never going to be settled in the way that, for instance, France is, with small and medium sized cities as well as villages all over the country. The US is also settled quite differently from Australia, with many medium sized cities all over. In Australia we hug the coast.

The present population of Australia is distributed similarly over the continent to the way the Australian Aborigines settled. A very recent genetic study by a group associated with La Trobe University shows that about 50,000 years ago the Aboriginal people arrived and settled very quickly all over the continent in stable communities. In the late 18th century, Europeans didn’t colonize a vast uninhabited land nor even, it would appear, a land of nomads, but rather, they displaced those who already lived here.

Melbourne

What is now Melbourne was an attractive place for the Aborigines and also to the first European settlers. From first hand reports, the area consisted of wetlands teeming with wildlife, set on a shallow bay that we know as Port Phillip Bay. The local Aboriginal population availed themselves of the rich natural offerings. Estimates of the Aboriginal population vary and are probably often under-estimated. The most plausible estimate I have seen with respect to the Aboriginal population in Australia wide is by a Dr. Jim Poulter at about 3 million and 20,000 in the “Melbourne” area. You can find the reference at /node/3720.

Europeans first settled in “Melbourne” in the 1830s, starting as a tent city. It was the nation’s capital city from 1901 to 1927 and reached a population of 1 million in 1930 - that is, in under 100 years.

Melbourne is now a city of 4.5 million and projected to grow to about 8 million by mid –century.

Is there any problem about Melbourne growing to 8 million and beyond? Is it inevitable?

Melbourne is situated within the state of Victoria and relies on the local environment for recreation, food, biodiversity. There is evidence that the current and even lower populations have not been living sustainably in Victoria:

Australian State of the Environment 2016 (just released).

From the executive summary:

“In the past 5 years (2011–16), environmental policies and management practices in Australia have achieved improvements in the state and trends of parts of the Australian environment. Australia’s built environment, natural and cultural heritage, and marine and Antarctic environments are generally in good condition.
There are, however, areas where the condition of the environment is poor and/or deteriorating. These include the more populated coastal areas and some of the growth areas within urban environments, where human pressure is greatest (particularly in south-eastern Australia); and the extensive land-use zone of Australia, where grazing is considered a major threat to biodiversity.”
“Many of the contemporary pressures on the Australian environment have increased over time as the drivers of population change and economic activity have increased the demand for food, fibre, minerals, land, transport and energy, and have increased our waste generation.”

Past Victorian State of the environment reports

2008
• Inland water ways- only 1/5 of major rivers and tributaries in Victoria were in good or excellent condition
• Land – salinity, acidification and need for artificial fertilizers, pesticides and irrigation
• Biodiversity – increased number of threatened species
• Coastal areas-negative impact of climate change and urbanization

2013

• Waste generation – poor and getting worse
• Energy use – poor and getting worse
• Conservation of ecosystems – fair and improving
• Marine and coastal water quality –fair and stable
• Fresh water aquatic ecosystems – poor and stable
• Threatened species, extent and condition of native vegetation- poor and getting worse
• Trends in GGE’s – poor and getting worse
• Status and trends in levels of Air pollutants – good and stable

The picture that emerges from these reports is to me alarming and should trigger and change in direction but we are not seeing this.

What about fresh food?

From the point of view of fresh food for Melbourne’s’ population there is a collision of population growth with what sustains it.

In a recent submission to Infrastructure Victoria Vice president of SPAVicTas, Jenny Warfe wrote the following :

“Dr Rachel Carey Research Fellow in Food Policy and Sustainable Food Systems, University of Melbourne, advises that Melbourne’s surrounding Green Wedges currently provide 41% of all our food: 82% of our vegetables, 39% of dairy, 100% of eggs and poultry, 63% of red meat, and 13% of fruit. Dr. Carey has also said we need to double our food production by 2050 under the current population growth trajectory."

She also pointed out that the areas around Melbourne where food can be grown are being used for housing and that this is particularly problematic in Australia where only 6% of the area is *arable.”
*suitable for crops

How are we accommodating the rising population?

At the most basic level, people must be accommodated. This is happening by:

1. Urban expansion

Recently, the state government announced 4 new suburbs to the north of Melbourne. One of these proposed suburbs, Wollert will accommodate 40,000 people or about 6 months of population growth. Yes, we need to build the equivalent accommodation of 2 of these land consuming suburbs every year. Quoting a friend “the only way to overcome the housing /crisis is to roll out these suburbs faster than we bring in the people!”

2.Urban consolidation or densification in established suburbs.

This is a highly energy consuming process of demolitions, major earthworks, reduction of permeable surfaces, and removal of vegetation including large trees. It is extremely disruptive whilst it is happening and the result invariably reduces amenity. When you think about it you cannot increase the height of a building with no change to set backs without negatively impacting on a neighbour's sunlight.

Just a seemingly small increase in heights can reduce winter sun and increase power bills. What happens to the effectiveness of your solar panels if they are overshadowed? What happens to infrastructure in the area when population is thus increased? At the same time the increased ratio of concrete to vegetation increases the “urban heat island” effect.

At the extreme end, high rise towers, housing hundreds of extra people and cars dramatically change the traffic volumes and visual character of the area from which they can be seen.

3. Regionalisation

This is a key part of Liberal population strategy. See the “2050 Looking forward” document http://vicpopulation.com.au/wp-content/uploads/Looking-Forward-Managing-Population-Growth-For-All-Victorians.pdf:

“The obvious strategy to reduce pressure in Greater Melbourne is to develop the regions” - Tim Smith, opposition spokesman on population pushing the idea of channeling population to the regions, such as Ballarat and Geelong.

But to put numbers in perspective, Victoria’s population grew by 123,000 last year. That’s a city the size of between Ballarat and Geelong.

The Victorian Government's "Plan Melbourne refresh" places the emphasis is on making existing Melbourne suburbs accommodate around 70% of population growth. They have said they will “save the backyard” but what will it be overshadowed with?.

There are very dramatic changes over a very short time span.

When did people start to become interested in the topic of population growth in Melbourne?

If we go back more than 15 years the urban myths were that Melbourne’s population was “going backwards”. I drove past the Point Cook area around this time with a car load of bush walkers who were stunned by the scale of outer suburban development. One of them gasped, “Where are all the people coming from?!”

Former Premier, Steve Bracks even told the people of Melbourne on ABC radio one morning that Victoria had more deaths than births. In other words, that we had negative natural increase! This was not so. In fact, at the time and right through recent decades, the situation has been the opposite to the tune of about 2 births per 1 death.

In the year to June 2002 Melbourne’s population had increased by 51, 478 people to 3,524,103 or by 1.5%. So the population was actually increasing but it was not a big news topic as it is now. The ongoing Victorian figures at that time for natural increase were around 60,000 births and about 30,000 deaths. Anything over this approximately 30,000 natural increase in population was via overseas migration, or interstate migration. Interstate migration though, in recent years, has been a rather insignificant number compared with overseas migration.

More recent figures for Victoria from births, deaths and marriages are:
2010- 71,688 births and 35,764 deaths - difference = 35,924
2016- 84,404 births and 40,015 deaths -difference = 44,389

Components of population growth in Victoria.

Population growth in Victoria is made up of -
1. Natural increase (births over deaths)
2. overseas migration
3. Inter-state migration.
The population of Melbourne also grows with the movement of people from country to city.

The population of Australia increases through natural increase and net overseas migration only. Overseas migration, a matter of government policy is the largest factor. If you look at a graph, you can see it responds very rapidly to any changes of government direction. Natural increase has far more inertia. Policies like baby bonuses may have an effect in the positive direction but this can be offset in the opposite direction by e.g. lack of housing affordability and are harder to pin-point. Response is slower. In a reasonably functioning developed situation people tend to have children when they foresee an economic climate that will be favorable to them. If an economic recession is anticipated, they may delay. If they cannot find housing they may delay. (Virginia Abernethy, Atlantic Monthly)

Year to June 2016-

Victoria’s population increased by 123,100 to 6,068,000 a growth rate of 2.1% [or a doubling rate of about 33 years]. The number is well over double the increase in 2002. Why? Immigration has increased since 2002.

In 2002-3 immigration to Australia was 125,300 and made up 52% of Australia’s population growth.
In 2014-5 it was 168,200 but has been as high as 300,000 in the last decade.

Remember Melbourne 2030?

In 2002 the Labor government’s planning blueprint “Melbourne 2030, planning for sustainable growth” aimed to fit in an extra 1 million people into Melbourne by 2030.

Before this blueprint was released, I responded to an invitation to be part of a community consultation process - a felt pen and butcher’s paper exercise. The necessity for the population growth that underpinned it was not questioned or discussed but presented as inevitable. Those who wanted to register their objections were on the whole unable to, as they had to be all sitting at the same table and they had little chance to organise this. Only issues that got a minimum number of votes at any one table were recorded. The option of not to grow the population at the rate assumed was not on offer.

The population of Melbourne at the time was 3.5 million and it is now about 4.5 million.

Successive Victorian governments have treated rapid population growth as inevitable and beyond their control. They know that unacceptable changes are being made to where we live, making life progressively less pleasant and more difficult. As the ABS figures tell us that the larger part of our population increase each year is from overseas migration, the Victorian government could send signals to the Federal government that the rate of influx is having adverse effects – but they don’t. In fact they do the opposite! They advertise for people from overseas to come and work in Victoria!

In public interactions state governments treat population growth as something they have to deal with and have no power over. Meantime the Victorian people are inconvenienced as infrastructure and services fall behind population growth.

Solving the problems of too rapid population growth is costly with the costs of level-crossing projects, cost of new roads, road maintenance, upgrading of rail systems. Australia has to build the equivalent of a new Canberra each year.

Where are we headed?

We shot past the prediction that Melbourne would have an extra 1 million people by 2030. Now it is predicted to be 8 million by 2050.

In the year 2015-2016, Melbourne grew by 2.1% down from 2.2%the previous year. At 2% p.a. and an estimated population of 4.5 million it will be 9 million in 35 years, that is, in 2052. In order NOT be 9 million the growth rate needs to slow. If it remained at 2% p.a. Melbourne's population would double again to 18 million by 2087 and 32 million by 2122. That means that in the next few years people would be born in Melbourne who may see it at 32 million.

Our establishment has not conceived of any of this being too much and there is no preparation for it.“Planning” appears to be – smoke and mirrors, tinkering around the edges to create differences in approach between team A and team B to the same problem.

Can we change our future?

Our future as a city of 8 million by 2050 is not inevitable as we can change this trajectory. If overseas migration were wound back to 1990s levels, of around 70,000 p.a., our growth would slow considerably, but we would still grow.

I implied in my title that I would go beyond 2050. I have vivid images in my mind but Katie Wong Hoy of the Age 30 August 2015 provided an image from Monash Architecture studios of how Melbourne might look accommodating about 8 million stretching out from the CBD. It is based on the footprint of Manhattan. This journalist was looking at Melbourne in 180 years’ time and using a compounding percentage growth of 2.2% (growth rate of Melbourne at the time) reaching an "alarming" (her own words) 228 million in 2195!

Difficult as it is to predict the future, I predict that this cannot happen as we would reach ecological collapse long before this.

What can you do?

If you are not happy with the current direction – here are some suggestions

Join a local group. One of the difficulties that constant change causes is that we now have difficulty getting organised to present an alternative, so anything that offers itself as a way to do so is good opportunity - residents’ groups, local conservation groups, join Sustainable Population Australia, Planning Backlash. Make comments or write articles for the alternative media, to open up discussion. Candobetter.net will publish anyone who gives the subject a go and other sites present opportunity for comment or debate. The main thing is to get the alternative to endless growth out there to counter the establishment message.

Make submissions to governments, and talk to your representatives. E.g you can make a submission to the Victorian population Policy Taskforce http://vicpopulation.com.au/have-your-say/

Stop Press - Just received this minute. It seems that Josh Frydenberg, Federal member for Boroondara and Minister of Environment, has put an interim protection order on St Kilda Road, as it has been sponsored for National Heritage Protection. I knew this has been proposed by a leader of the Liberals and a leader of Labor. A number of us wrote to Josh urging him to do it. Great news!

1.

Upper Ferntree Gully residents mad as hell:

Read the press release from the residents of Upper Ferntree Gully. They are angry. Please sign the petition here - it will be presented to their local MP. https://www.change.org/p/legislative-council-of-victoria-protect-the-dandenong-ranges-2-storeys-not-tall-stories?recruiter=58750254&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=copylink

2.

People in Southbank get no say

This is a terrible decision by Andrews and Wynne - the people of Southbank get no say at all. Melbourne is being wrecked. See what Greg Barber says - what Crown want Crown gets - let us wonder how. http://www.theage.com.au/business/property/crown-casino-wins-approval-for-90storey-tower-at-southbank-20170208-gu8saj

Letter to the editor

What a dreadful decision by the Planning Minister and the Premier to approve that giant building for Crown. It breaks the governments own rules about heights in the city. Why have rules? The question has be asked, how did Crown get them to break their own rules? Think of the overshadowing and overlooking. I pity the people living in Southbank with this building going up and they get no say whatsoever whether they want it or not. Interesting the answer given by the Minister on radio Thursday when he was asked about shadowing. He said there would be no shadowing. Really? It has been worked out that the shadow will stretch out for 1km. That is quite a shadow.

Building by building our city is being ruined.

Mary Drost

3.

Melbourne used to be more livable despite what the Age says:

This is on the Age website. http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/from-quite-awful-to-liveable-urban-design-guru-helps-transform-melbourne-city-20170209-gu9570.htmlWell I don't agree. Our city was not awful in the 70's, it was more liveable than it is now and it is being ruined more by the year. Wait until they dig it up for this terrible Metro rail and it will be totally unliveable.

4.

Peninsula losing its bandicoots

Read this story from the Peninsula. We are losing all our heritage. So very sad indeed and the government just does not care. http://morningtonpeninsulabandicoot.com/2017/02/05/brush-fence-vs-heritage-and-history/

5.

This disaster called Metro Rail:

Well at least the libs are making an attempt to get South Yarra Station connected. But I think it all should be scrapped and build other things like a train to the airport or one to Doncaster or lots of other places. They are obsessed about this one and it will wreck Melbourne for years. Fine to connect it to South Yarra but do you know that the news trains won't work on the rail we have and the trains are too long for our existing stations. They say that the loop is full. That can be solved by improving the signalling system. In London on the line I use when there, the Jubilee line trains are only about 4 minutes apart. Sometimes at peak I have seen a train disappearing one end and the next one appearing at the other. Why can't we be so clever? We just want to dig up parts of the city and St Kilda Road.
http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/liberals-make-another-attempt-to-include-south-yarra-station-in-melbourne-metro-20170207-gu7t9w.html

6.

This is disgraceful from Beaumaris

The government just chopped down all those lovely trees at the Beaumaris Secondary School with virtually no warning. Beaumaris which is so protective of its trees, they have landscape overlays to protect them but the government just do this vandalism. So dishonest that they say they have consulted with the community without mentioning that they did not hear a word that was said - just tick the box - community consulted - tick. Read the article.

Some may already have read the following article in the 'Comments' section of 7th Feb The Age newspaper, from our President Greg Mier. It concerns the (still nowhere near completed) vegetation destruction at the Beaumaris Secondary School site.

Keep your eyes both on the western boundary, and the often overlooked southern ('Community') oval's boundary with Long Hollow Heathland which acts as a vital protective buffer!! The VSBA's latest map, as they consistently have been throughout, is materially misleading. We were even refused a measly two or three metres around the fence lines.

Genuine community consultation? Pfft!!.

http://www.smh.com.au/comment/once-again-development-comes-first-20170127-gtzvks.html

Community outrage continues in the battle to protect the iconic Dandenong Ranges from inappropriate development following Knox Council’s recent failure to adopt the independent Panel recommendation for mandatory maximum height controls in the Upper Ferntree Gully Activity Centre. Knox Appropriate Development Alliance President, Catherine Kruse said that a petition to the State Government calling for their intervention is gathering momentum with interest from across Victoria. A rally is also planned for Monday February 27th at the Knox Council offices.

“Knox Council has shown that it cannot be trusted to act in the best interest of the community, and it is time for the Victorian Government to intervene and adopt the panel recommendations before the gateway to the Dandenongs is destroyed forever”, she said.

Ms Kruse said that people are gobsmacked that Council continues to ignore, not only the wishes of the community, who have fought a long and hard battle, but the professional recommendations of
their own experts and the government appointed Planning Panel.

“The recommendations were quite clear – that mandatory maximum building heights – not discretionary as proposed by the council, will provide the Upper Ferntree Gully Neighbourhood Activity Centre the protection required from inappropriate development”.

“The rest of the foothills activity centres in Knox have that protection and surety (mandatory height controls). We call on the State Government not to sign off on discretionary controls and to intervene and save the Dandenong Ranges”, Ms Kruse said. “We call on members of the public to get behind the petition and attend at Knox Council on February 27th at 6.30pm.”

The petition will be presented to Upper House MP, Edward O’Donohue on February 27th at 6.30pm at the Knox Council, 511 Burwood Highway, Wantirna. Contact: Catherine Kruse – 0415 871 268

(Submission inside) Plans for the proposed underground railway from north west to south east of the city are not yet finalised. On Friday the 13th the Minister of Planning said the location of the proposed Domain station may be moved and yet the Age announces 14th Jan that work would begin on Monday the 16th. This is clearly vandalism. They are going to start destroying trees and moving gas and sewer lines at the Domain. Remember that St Kilda Road is heritage listed and Heritage Victoria have received thousands of objections and Heritage Vic have not yet made a determination. One has to wonder how much pressure they are under by this State Government in their determination to start digging. We are sick to death of hearing them say they are 'shovel-ready'. How dare the government say that the damage to St Kilda road will be worth it for the advantage the rail will give. The necessity for this rail is being questioned by respected planners in Melbourne. There are far more important road and rail projects that are needed first.

Hard to believe that they are intent on wrecking one of the most beautiful boulevards in the world. One of the most picturesque parts of Melbourne. Compare this to what London are doing right now - putting in 42 kms of underground from west to east called Crossrail, without disrupting anything up on top. This took years in the planning before one shovel was put in the ground so that they got it perfectly done. Please Minister ask for their help. (Mary Drost, Convenor, Planning Backlash.) [Candobetter.net Editor: Illustrations inserted by candobetter.net editor. See also Submission from the National Trust of Australia. and this Port Phillip Council information about its trees which include the historic St Kilda Road historic boulevard.]

December 2016
Re: Heritage Victoria – VHR: H2359; P25649, St Kilda Rd

Submission regarding heritage controls on St Kilda Road, The Domain and the Trees and the Gardens

Introduction

This in relation to the damage by the proposed Metro Underground Railway to the wonderful Boulevard known as St Kilda Road. I write to object to the granting of this permit.

The Route

First point to be made is that the routing must be changed. More sensibly the route should be from the north of Melbourne via Southern Cross Station to Docklands and then to Fishermans Bend and from there across South Melbourne and crossing under St Kilda Road in the vicinity of Toorak Road and coming right through and linking to South Yarra Station.
The proposed route does not make sense in that there would be a station at the north of the city and then at the southern end, really duplicating the existing city loop, totally unnecessary. On the other hand it makes much more logical sense to be on the west of the city and include Docklands and Fishermans Bend.
However I really believe that this concept of an underground in that location, using that route, is not going to help Melbourne at all and it will be detrimental to the beauty and heritage of the city. This connection between north and south already exists using Southern Cross Station and Flinders St Station and connecting into the loop. There are far more important railway extensions that should be made first e.g. to the airport and to Doncaster. Why not require MMRA to submit costings and details of alternative routes for public consideration?

The Tunnel

It is hard to believe that they would even for one minute contemplate not tunnelling deep enough to avoid any damage on the surface that can be avoided in this significant heritage area. The idea of any cutting and filling rather than using deep tunnel mining throughout from the Arts Centre down Toorak Road and in South Yarra is absurd to the point of stupidity. Why is deep mining tunnelling not being used right through? It should be.

It is thirty plus years since the City Loop was put in. That is deep and I think no cutting and filling was done. The idea of cutting and filling to save money is short sighted in the extreme.
When Singapore want to do something new they send a team around the world to see where it is done best and get them to help. We believe our government needs to re-think this whole plan and route. They should immediately get in touch with authorities in London and ask their help and advice. They are the world’s best, having started their underground in 1863 and have an incredible underground network and only recently tunnelled out 42 kms from Heathrow airport to Canary Wharf and even further east without disrupting anything on top in such a devastating manner as this proposal from MMRA/Lovell Chen would. Or the government could ask Switzerland for help. They dig tunnels through miles of mountain.

(See Switzerland, longest tunnel in the world: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-36423250 “Gotthard tunnel: World's longest and deepest rail tunnel opens in Switzerland”, 1 June 2016; http://www.houseofswitzerland.org/swissstories/environment/construction-world-s-longest-environmentally-friendly-tunnel, “The construction of the world’s longest environmentally friendly tunnel.” See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channel_Tunnel ).

But we talk of cutting and filling down one of the most beautiful boulevards in the world. Try doing this in Paris and you would be sent straight to the guillotine.
In contrast this proposal is for cutting and filling down one of the most beautiful boulevards in the world – and that is unacceptable loss and destruction of cultural heritage and the defining character, identity and beauty of Melbourne.

St Kilda Road must not be damaged. It would a tragedy to have all the threatened trees knocked down. It would take many years for them to grow again to maturity. These are mature elms that have been there for probably 100 years. How dare they damage them in any way.

The tunnels should be deep enough to prevent any damage or vibration to anything up on top whether buildings or trees as was done recently in London. (see: the Crossrail project, http://www.crossrail.co.uk/, “A world-class new railway for London and the south east,” with integrated transparent planning and design up-front and the project planned around heritage protection as a priority, including protection of the setting and visual amenity of protected heritage squares in London as a result of either the permanent or temporary works). We believe this application for a Permit should be refused. More time, planning and consideration for protecting and maintaining heritage and the defining landmarks, gardens and monuments of the city should be the starting and guiding principles around which transport and underground railway tunnels are planned.

The Shrine

What is planned in the area of the Shrine is a total disgrace and a disregard of the importance and history and location of this beautiful Shrine in memory of the men and women who have lost their lives in wars defending Australia. It was superbly planned and located in relation to St Kilda Road and the city and the surrounding gardens, and these visual lines and vistas are part of its heritage significance registration, and they should be maintained and left undisturbed. How dare any government propose to turn this into an excavation site wrecking the parks and gardens and trees surrounding it at least for years, possibly damaged forever. This must not be allowed. We, the people of Victoria, rely on you at Heritage Victoria to protect these heritage sites.

The Domain

This beautiful area of parks and gardens and trees must not be touched and damaged in the dreadful way proposed in this plan and application. In fact there is no need to have a train station in that position, at ‘Domain’, at all. Other locations and routes should be considered, costed and submitted, ones that are not on heritage sites, places and gardens and do not propose to do such dreadful damage to the whole precious heritage, gardens and monuments precinct. The current St Kilda Rd trams and tram stops and the current number 8 tram in its present route are sufficient. As said earlier the underground must be rerouted and avoid this whole area and come under St Kilda Road to link up with South Yarra Station. The plan and proposal is misconceived and would fail the people of the State of Victoria and cause loss of irreplaceable cultural heritage and civic identity and pride.

There are alternative routes that are not on heritage lands and places and that is where MMRA should focus its planning and transport routes, tunnels and hubs.

Whilst we support the development of transport infrastructure, this proposal, shockingly, is situated entirely in heritage sites and lands (St Kilda Road, the Shrine of Remembrance and Shrine reserve gardens and trees, the Domain Gardens, the South African Soldier’s Memorial, and adjacent affected trees, gardens and sites) and the costs of the proposal is heritage devastation, a far-too great a price to pay. It is an unnecessary and completely undesirable destruction of the entire area that is and should be heritage protected. Heritage Victoria should protect this heritage gardens and monuments precinct as a whole, and require MMRA consideration and costings for alternate routes that are not on and through heritage places be made available to the public.
Is that protection not what Heritage Victoria and heritage registration is for?!

South African Soldier’s Memorial

The plans to dismantle and store this borders on an insult to the sacred nature of this cherished memorial. It must not be allowed to happen. Is nothing sacred? Like the Shrine, it is a sacred memorial to the fallen and must be totally protected. Do not allow this to happen to the South African soldiers’ memorial.

Heritage Victoria

This entire area is under Heritage Victoria protection and they would be derelict in their responsibilities if they approve such terrible destruction under their watch, even if they are at odds with the Government Department under which they operate. Their duty must be to protect these important heritage sites of State significance which this area most certainly is even if it means preventing the Government from following their plans.
I and the coalition of 250+ resident groups (representing at least several thousand people of the State of Victoria; some groups have hundreds of members e.g. my local group has 600 members) strongly request this permit application be denied. The proposal is out of keeping with the values and heritage rights of the people of the State of Victoria. We ask that Heritage Victoria acts to stop this proposal and protects our heritage. We rely on you to act in accordance to protect this entirely-heritage registered area and to refuse this permit.

Mary Drost OAM
Convenor
Planning Backlash Inc
Coalition of 250+ resident groups

Note: Candobetter.net has removed Mary Drost’s home address and email contact for privacy and to prevent spam. You can contact Mary via our contact link at top left corner of this site.

You are deep in an enjoyable conversation when suddenly a loud blustering person arrives, diverting all the attention of your group to her. She shows no curiosity as to what you were discussing before she arrived, relating a story about herself as though assuming everyone had been waiting for her arrival to come alive ..

Has this ever happened to you? It’s a summer Saturday afternoon and you are sitting restfully in the backyard with friends, enjoying a conversation roaming from cinema, music, the local park, and local to international politics. One of your friends is in the midst of relating something exciting, when in bursts another person to the group. He is already talking loudly as he approaches. He turns everyone’s attention to himself, drowning out the previous conversation and taking over with a description of his perilous trip across town which hindered his progress,making him late. He offers a bottle of wine, apologizing fulsomely and flamboyantly for not bringing what he intended because he was held up with work prior to his traffic woes. He then notes aloud that things look as though they need some livening up and requests some loud music. The mood is broken.

Alternatively, it is a winter evening and everyone is seated around a table deep in conversation about the pressures of work and house payments and explorations as to why we never got our universal 3 day week. Suddenly a woman blusters in the front door, her penetrating voice, complaining of the cold echoes up the hallway to the dining area. The conversation at the table has reached a certain level of interest and consensus but with a jolt it is brought back to the mundane as this woman inserts herself, with the aid of the weather and her inability to predict it in order to dress adequately for the temperature. Suddenly all the attention is on this latecomer. She takes over. The conversation now revolves around the way this woman looks, her clothes , her hair, her life. It turns out that she is a last minute invitee and an extra chair and setting is brought in to accommodate her. Everybody moves up closer to their neighbour and the main course is served. The conversation never returns to where it was.

It occurred to me today that this is how I feel on a national scale about the way migration is treated by the media and by migrant advocacy groups in Australia . The reason I feel like this is that I cannot listen to any media without hearing about migrants to Australia. There seems to be nothing else to talk about except perhaps gay marriage. The airwaves are stuffed full of the migrant experience of Australia, be it a refugee experience a skilled migrant experience, be it a recent experience or one dating back to the 1950s. Nothing else seems to matter now in this country apart from migration. There is no other ongoing conversation .

I really don’t mind if people want to come and live here, but I am irritated with hearing about what they think of me and my compatriots day in and day out and how their expectations, somehow have not been met. Every interview with visiting luminaries on the ABC seems to light on the well -worn subject of immigration. It’s as though we had nothing to talk about before they started coming. Anyone who has just tuned to local media would think that this IS the only topic- that this is IT!

I’m also tired of hearing that we were not “vibrant” before the tide of migrants (I actually can’t remember a time when there were not migrants but their numbers have grown enormously in the last 10 years). The imposition of "vibrancy" is like the man who asks for loud music when people are enjoying a quiet conversation.

Come in if you wish but please just take a vacant seat and listen for a while to the conversation you have just joined.

George Soros funded and orchestrated the refugee crisis in Europe, opening the gates to allow refugees and terrorists into the continent. Soros’s agenda has always been about destroying national sovereignty and national borders. See also, "Australian democracy swiss-cheesed by George Soros Open Societies Foundations."

David Galland and Stephen McBride at http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-07-08/how-george-soros-singlehandedly-created-european-refugee-crisis-and-why report:

The refugee crisis is not a naturally occurring phenomenon. It coincided with OSF donating money to the US-based Migration Policy Institute and the Platform for International Cooperation on Undocumented Migrants, both Soros-sponsored organizations. Both groups advocate the resettlement of third-world Muslims into Europe.

In 2015, a Sky News reporter found “Migrant Handbooks” on the Greek island of Lesbos. It was later revealed that the handbooks, which are written in Arabic, had been given to refugees before crossing the Mediterranean by a group called “Welcome to the EU.”

Welcome to the EU is funded by—you guessed it—the Open Society Foundations.

Soros has not only backed groups that advocate the resettlement of third-world migrants into Europe, he in fact is the architect of the “Merkel Plan.”

The Merkel Plan was created by the European Stability Initiative whose chairman Gerald Knaus is a senior fellow at none other than the Open Society Foundations.

The plan proposes that Germany should grant asylum to 500,000 Syrian refugees. It also states that Germany, along with other European nations, should agree to help Turkey, a country that’s 98% Muslim, gain visa-free travel within the EU starting in 2016.

Political Discourse

The refugee crisis has raised huge concern in European countries like Hungary.

In response to 7,000 migrants entering Hungarian territory per day in 2015, the Hungarian government reestablished border control in order to keep the hordes of refugees from entering the country.

Of course this did not go down well with Soros and his close allies, the Clintons.

Bill Clinton has since come out and accused both Poland and Hungary of thinking “democracy is too much trouble” and wanting to have a “Putin-like authoritarian dictatorship.”

Seeing through Clinton’s comments, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán responded by saying, “The remarks made about Hungary and Poland … have a political dimension. These are not accidental slips of the tongue. And these slips or remarks have been multiplying since we are living in the era of the migrant crisis. And we all know that behind the leaders of the Democratic Party, we have to see George Soros.”

He went on to say that “although the mouth belongs to Clinton, the voice belongs to Soros.”

Soros has since said of Orbán’s policy toward the migrants: “His plan treats the protection of national borders as the objective and the refugees as an obstacle. Our plan treats the protection of refugees as the objective and national borders as the obstacle.”

It’s hard to imagine that he could be any clearer in his globalist intentions.

The Profit Motive

So why is Soros going to such lengths to flood Europe with hordes of third-world Muslims?

We can’t be sure, but it has recently come to light that Soros has taken a large series of “bearish derivative positions” against US stocks. Apparently, he thinks that causing chaos in Europe will spread the contagion to the United States, thus sending US markets spiraling downward.

Posted on July 10, 2016 by Sean Adl-Tabatabai in News, World Read more at YourNewsWire.com but originally published at zerohedge.com

http://dcleaks.com/ have revealed that billionaire, George Soros, has used billions of dollars to try to bring about open borders by funding NGOs all over the world to harass people who do not want mass immigration. Tactics taught are to equate all immigrants with refugees and to accuse people who want control over immigration numbers of racism.

Hackers have revealed that Australia's GetUp, like its U.S. counterparts, MoveOn and Avaaz, have massive financial support from Soros and that their agendas conform to those of Soros. Labor Leader Bill Shorten is linked to Soros-funded activities as is Greens Sarah Hanson-Young.

Bill Shorten, Australia's opposition leader and GetUp.

"GetUp! was established by ­activists Jeremy Heimans and David Madden with funding from Soros. The Labor-affiliated Construction Forestry Mining Energy Union donated $1.1 million to the group. Bill Shorten and John Hewson are former board members. A major funder listed on its 2014-15 Australian Electoral Commission expenditure return is Avaaz, the US GetUp! ­affiliate that has received copious amounts of funding from Soros networks."[1]

Now we have some idea why Bill Shorten refuses to reduce immigration. How many politicians have been influenced this way by Soros's money - either as recipients of awards, and positions or through funding? (We also know that every recent prime minister and opposition leader has become a member of the Australian Multicultural Foundation, which seems to have similar mass immigration values and leadership program links but no apparent affiliation with Soros. The Scanlon Foundation has mass immigration and opinion shaping agendas but no apparent links.)

Soros's money has influenced 'Leadership programs' in many areas, university grants and journalism in Australia. Google "Open Society Foundations". [2] Consider the impact of this on the formation of Australian politicians, researchers, academics, journalists, presenters, teachers, 'ethnic leaders' etc. Emily's list, for women aspiring to get ahead in politics, is financed by Soros, so we know now why the women who get ahead in Australian Labor have nothing serious to say about population or the natural environment.

The Australian Greens

Greens Leader Sarah Hanson Young was named a 'World economic forum young global leader' for 2016. George Soros is the chairman of that forum. [3] The Greens have, over the past decade or so, changed from a conservation platform to an open borders one employing the tactics of unfairly stigmatising people as racist and xenophobic when they call for limits on economic immigration in order to protect our natural environment.[4] Who or what changed so many of them?

"They attack democratic states by advocating a porous border policy, ­reframing illegal immigrants as refugees and degrading critics of totalitarian tendencies such as ­Islamism in orchestrated campaigns of PC censorship. Documents uncovered by Soros leaks reveal a pattern of funding for programs that prosecute porous borders, mass immigration into the Wes­t nations from Islamist regions, and overt campaigns against dissenters. OSF has provided several million to the Centre for American Progress, whose programs ­include the explicit targeting of free­thinkers critical of Islamism. A recent program grant described a strategy to target six critics of ­Islamism and the “right-wing media” in an “audit of Islamophobic activities”." [1]

Need to list Australian organisations and people linked to Opens Societies Foundations

There is a list available of United States organisations funded by Soros, but none available of Australian ones. Nonetheless, the U.S. list is very informative of the kinds of organisations that Soros has used to undermine national sovereignty.

'Independent' on line newspaper,New Matilda, praises South Africa's Mail and Guardian, calling for more papers like these and noting approvingly that they are backed by the Open Foundations Society.

"The twist, with South Africa’s Mail and Guardian, is revealed inside its front cover: its investigative reporting is supported by the Open Society Institute. To justify that, of course, it has to be clear that journalism is worth having, and capable of fulfilling a socially useful function as a civic tool in democracy." https://newmatilda.com/2012/06/19/journalism-we-really-need/

NOTES

[1] Jennifer Oriel, "Dumped files show influence of George Soros on Western politics, The Australian, August 22, 2016, http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/dumped-files-show-influence-of-george-soros-on-western-politics/news-story/937a225e62420ea3807bd8308b0dad83
[2] For example: https://blogs.adelaide.edu.au/rb-bulletin/2015/05/26/open-society-foundations-open-society-fellowship-20152016/, http://www.uq.edu.au/uqadvantage/robert-walter, http://findanexpert.unimelb.edu.au/display/person460793#tab-research, International journalism grants: https://www.icij.org/about; Leadership programs: https://cpd.org.au/author/phil-lynch/ and Open Society Foundations: https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/press-releases/open-society-foundations-launch-worldwide-fund-support-nonprofits-navigating; and so on - just keep googling. So many of our academics, researchers, politicians, journalists, have received funding from The Open Society Foundations (George Soros) and to get this funding they had to conform to its values and tactics.
[3] http://greens.org.au/news/sa/sarah-hanson-young-named-world-economic-forum-young-global-leader-2016
[4] "Greens members harassed for expressing valid views on environment and population" and "Greens population activist threatened with expulsion"

Victoria Market, as we know it, is under threat. The City of Melbourne, along with the top end of town, has plans to reduce and gentrify our historic market, paying lip service only to its valued heritage and the important service it provides to the wider Melbourne community, in particular, its role in keeping food quality standards high, food prices down, while providing astounding diversity.

The Council’s intention is to:

sell off part of the market’s land for commercial development, road extension and other purposes
to build high-rise buildings at its immediate doorstep,creating tall walls and corridors around its perimeter
to shrink the market from 12 sheds to 5
to gentrify this historical market by cherry picking which traders will stay or go,
jeopardise &/or close small, family-run businesses by not renewing or extending leases beyond one year,
to create a gourmet food precinct and entertainment space.

In short the Council proposes to micro-manage a cultural change of the market, to change its size and shape and give itself free rein to make physical changes to its layout without further public consultation.

Dear Protectors of Public Lands Victoria Inc. members and friends

Here is a message from the Friends of the Queen Victoria Market. (PPL VIC is a great supporter) "You are invited to a meeting which is about building a community campaign with market traders, its customers, the wider community and the NUW (National Union of Workers) to protect the Vic Market, its people and its history. See https://www.facebook.com/FriendsofQueenVictoriaMarket. where you will find the flier and good background on the issues. The Friends of QVM Facebook page is a community page and everyone who is interested is welcome."

Meeting details are:

Date & time: Wednesday 20 July at 10.30am
Venue: Victorian Trades Hall Council Chambers, Cnr Lygon and Victoria Streets, Carlton
Location: Melways ref: Map 2B F12, Trams along Victoria and Swanston Sts, Buses along Lygon & Swanston Streets
Contact: Mary-Lou Howie M 0401 811 893
Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/FriendsofQueenVictoriaMarket

The message from Friends of QVM continues: Just in case you don’t follow the Friends of Queen Victoria Market Facebook page which I co- author and now has a huge following, the Vic Market traders and supporters are having a big meeting at Trades Hall this Wednesday at 10:30 am.

As you must be aware, the Vic Market, as we know it, is under threat. The City of Melbourne, along with the top end of town, has plans to reduce and gentrify our historic market, paying lip service only to its valued heritage and the important service it provides to the wider Melbourne community, in particular, its role in keeping food quality standards high, food prices down, while providing astounding diversity.

The Council’s intention is to:

sell off part of the market’s land for commercial development, road extension and other purposes
to build high-rise buildings at its immediate doorstep,creating tall walls and corridors around its perimeter
to shrink the market from 12 sheds to 5
to gentrify this historical market by cherry picking which traders will stay or go,
jeopardise &/or close small, family-run businesses by not renewing or extending leases beyond one year,
to create a gourmet food precinct and entertainment space.

In short the Council proposes to micro-manage a cultural change of the market, to change its size and shape and give itself free rein to make physical changes to its layout without further public consultation.

The Lord Mayor has said this is the largest project ever undertaken by the City of Melbourne and an implementation strategy is now in place, yet no comprehensive plans detailing what is to be implemented has ever been revealed to the public.

Friends of Queen Victoria Market have a healthy readership of around 2,000 - 5,000+ people who want the market to continue as a sustainable, functioning shopping space for all people in Melbourne. We support revitalisation of the market and believe in proper independent consultation that leads to appropriate change, always mindful of QVM’s history, heritage and importance to our community.

If you are available, I would love to see you at Trades Hall on Wednesday. Cheers, Mary-Lou Howie M: 0401 811 893

Circulated by Julianne Bell Secretary Protectors of Public Lands Victoria Inc.PO Box 197 Parkville 3052 Mobile 0408022408

At the Planning Backlash and Boroondara Residents Action Group "Mad as Hell event" in Camberwell on Sunday 29th May, 2016, BRAG introduced the following draft Resident's Rights Bill. To indicate your support please email drostmary[AT]gmail.com. Among other things it calls for the setting of population growth targets within OECD averages. It thus nails a continuing problem of the moving target in previous population policy claims. Australia lacks a civil rights code, unlike Europe. Our civil rights used to be implicit in our publicly owned resources and services, like water, Telecom, and power. This draft Residents' Bill of Rights is truly impressive in its ability to identify gaps in Australian residents' rights.

Residents' Bill of Rights

We, the current residents of Melbourne, country and coastal areas of Victoria, call on the government and opposition at all levels to act to protect our homes, communities and cities from over-development.

WE REJECT:

• The current trend of excessive population growth through the ever increasing levels of immigration.
• The excessive influence of vested interests and lobby groups upon residential planning and government decision making.
• The increasing densification of residential areas and the consequent impact on our infrastructure without commensurate infrastructure upgrades at all levels.
• The continual changes to planning law and regulations that provides no certainty for the peaceful enjoyment of our neighbourhoods by the current and future residents.
• The continual urban sprawl into Melbourne’s green fringe and farming land.

We DEMAND:

• Population growth targets to be limited to sustainable levels based on OECD averages which is currently around 0.63%. (Australia’s rate of growth is currently around 1.7% ).

• Infrastructure be upgraded to meet current needs and kept ahead of requirements to meet our cities population growth requirements.

• A bipartisan planning environment that provides certainty and protects residential areas against densification in any form.

• Councils to be the sole “responsible Authority” for issuing planning permits and building permits.

• VCAT’s role to be confined to resolution of legal planning disputes and ensuring that lawful planning regulations are met.

• FIRB rules and penalties designed and strictly applied to prevent destruction of existing housing stock and neighbourhood character by foreign nationals.

• Expansion and development of regional cities and associated infrastructure to support population growth and lifestyle quality.

• Developer donations be deemed illegal with mandatory disqualification, forfeiture, or dismissal from or of any current or future development.

• Protection of current open space and tree canopy with requirement to retain or replace vegetation on all new or redevelopment sites.

• Government, at all levels, legally required to assess and protect the interests of residents ahead of developers’ interests.

• All planning committees and reference groups must have at reasonable resident representation.

• Legislate to ensure permits can be refused where a poll of residents/owners living within 300m radius of the proposed development indicates objection by the majority of existing residents/owners.

• A national uniform code be developed to define minimum dwelling size, minimum open space per bedroom and maximum occupancy limits.

• Enforceable minimum Victorian building standards regulations administered by an independent authority.

• Any breach of a planning permit or building standards should result in a prosecution by the relevant authority or the State or local Government to ensure proper rectification

• Developers to meet infrastructure costs necessary for new developments including drainage, sewage, water supply, telecommunications, gas and electricity.

• Developers to be required to contribute to a general community/Council infrastructure fund, , based on number of bedrooms or estimated improved value of the property.

• Neighbourhood character, architecture and heritage requirements to be met by every new residential development.

• Establishment and enforcement of resident and visitor car parking standards, for new multi-dwelling developments, at the rate of 0.75 spaces per bedroom, for residents and 0.25 spaces for visitors.

• Character protection for heritage and traditional local shopping strips.

Published & authorized by PLANNING BACKLASH, on behalf of it’s 250
supporting residents' groups in Melbourne, country & coastal areas.
PO Box 1034 Camberwell, Vic. 3124

Migration is part of our collective history, but Europe’s political leaders are still failing completely to address widespread public concern over the flood of migrants now storming Europe’s borders. The consequences of these pressures will have profound impacts.

Unable to reach rational solutions beyond discussing how many each member state should be obliged to take, bribing African countries to take back their own citizens who don’t qualify as refugees and now paying Turkey to take back illegals bound for Greece, while taking a similar quota of Syrians from Turkey, are inadequate responses. Our leaders are moving into systemic chaos, where the Human Rights Act, has spawned a people-trafficking industry that is endangering our security and running rings around governments at taxpayers’ expense. It is not fit for purpose and needs reform. Without leaving the EU, the UK could suspend and redraw the act with our European partners, who all have much to gain from a more sensible approach.

In Britain, the Government, under Labour, first lost control of immigration and then tried to spin the idea that a large influx of people is vital to our interests. Despite attempts at reforms, the system is still failing. Legal migration in to the UK has hit record levels - up 40 per cent on 2014, according to the Office for National Statistics. Nearly 100,000 illegals were detected trying to enter the UK in 2015, while the EU is receiving thousands of illegal migrants a day – triple the rate last year.

The situation has been escalating for years, but after German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s grand moral gesture to take in 800,000 ‘refugees’ a year in response to the photo of a drowned boy on a Turkish beach and then demand other EU states take their share, it has ignited the hopes of millions more to settle in Europe. Now barbed wire borders are being erected in the heart of Europe, destroying the ideal of free movement.

Described as refugees or just ‘migrants’, as though there has merely been some bureaucratic error in their status, the asylum lobby and much of the media are cheerleading the appeal for public sympathy as a tragic human interest story. But this terrorist infiltrated people-smuggling led invasion, facilitated by EU governments, presents a huge challenge from failing states with exploding populations and self-inflicted turf wars.

Generous policies in Sweden and Germany are enabling thousands of non-EU migrants and illegals to settle legally there and then move to other member states as internal EU migrants. Over 1.2 million have claimed asylum in 2015. Our politicians consistently ignore this back door impact.

Sweden has been receiving up to 2000 unaccompanied minors a week in late 2015, nearly a third of its migrant influx, who can then have their families flown in to join them. Most were males giving their age as 16 or 17 but receiving groups say many appear much older. According to Statistics Sweden, 50 per cent of refugees are not in work seven years after arriving in the country. Even after 15 years, 40 per cent are still on welfare without a job – a major drain on the country’s welfare system.

Refugee lobbyists say it is the moral duty of Western countries to absorb these migrants. Do the media and politicians seriously think that Europe can take in the populations of sub-Saharan Africa and beyond? When will the line be drawn? All UK parties are well aware of the mounting pressures on housing, schools and health services, but don’t like to talk about it. Or the 25-50 per cent of young people in Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece who don’t have a job. So too, they should be aware of the Parliamentary report in 2008 that the large rise in legal immigration to the UK had virtually no net economic gain for the country. Nor do we need high immigration to counter a temporary rise in ageing populations. Ever more migrants also get old and then need support.

The Government talks about skilled immigrants Britain needs, but skilled immigrants account for only 20% of total non-EU immigrants in Britain and many actually do unskilled work when they get here.

Proposals to cap numbers will barely touch the scale of the true problem - a permanent population swelling so quickly by other immigration pathways, including a generous interpretation of family reunion from outside the EU that is adding to the pressures on our environment and food security.

Australia is often cited by UK politicians as a model immigration system, but its population just hit 24 million– 17 years earlier than expected. With net overseas migration contributing 53 per cent to total population growth, the population is now set to double every 50 years. This in an arid continent with only six per cent of the land able to grow crops.

Europe’s growing immigration crisis
In 1950, the countries that later constituted the EU-27 had a population of 370 million. By 2010 it topped 500 million - equivalent to absorbing the inhabitants of another present-day France and Britain combined. By January 2015 Eurostat figures show the population was 508.2 million - up 1.3 million from the previous year, with the majority of 1.1m a result of net legal immigration into the EU.

Add to this the rapidly growing number of illegals – with over 1.2 million detected in 2015 and many more entering undetected, according to the EU borders agency, Frontex.

Today, only Syria currently has an acute refugee crisis, but to avert mounting chaos and retain the fabric of the EU, we have to stop the lure of a gateway to permanent citizenship to millions. People in Europe might be more reassured if irregular migrants eligible for asylum were offered temporary support and then returned to their countries when the crisis resolved. Many of those who claimed asylum from countries like Somalia and Iraq go back for extended holidays, but the claims for asylum continue. Iraqi Airways now operates four flights a week from the UK to facilitate demand for vacations back home. Yet Iraqis are in the top ten asylum applications to the UK in 2015,

Also in the list are Nigeria – touted as Africa’s fasted growing economy and other democratic countries like Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and even Albania – now 25 years since it became a European democracy. Eritrea is top of the list, supposedly linked to harsh national service. What is going on? International pressure should sort this out, not expect resettlement.

Part of the problem is that EU countries don’t have repatriation agreements with many countries involved, but this could be remedied quite simply, as just about all the sender countries in Africa and many in Asia are recipients of generous Western aid. We need to use this leverage. Several countries, like Senegal, condone exporting people in the hope they will reach Europe, find work and send back remittances.

Global leaders need to be focused on real solutions and more effective regional aid in all these fragile states as well as engaging more constructively with Russia, Iran and countries in the region to bring about positive outcomes. You can help far more people cost effectively in nearby protected areas than import millions into high-cost West European countries. Sweden is now having to spend its foreign aid budget on trying to deal with new migrant arrivals.

The current level of UK immigration and increasing birth rates will require building the equivalent of a new Manchester every year. It is little wonder we have a housing crisis. How can we possibly accommodate this and claim it is sustainable?

In 1998, the Office for National Statistics predicted that the UK population would rise to 65m by 2051. We’re already there! Now they say it could reach 80 million by 2040, mostly as a result of immigration.

David Cameron promises a review of welfare benefits for EU migrants but equally, we need to look at the pull factors for illegals – many openly piling up in Calais attempting to cross to the UK. The EU Commission says it is the responsibility of each Member State to set the rules for welfare support.

We need urgent action to address these issues and clear shared rules that would be strict enough to discourage ineligible people from attempting dangerous journeys. The growing cost to communities of accommodating large-scale inflows of people, in a now crowded world, raises many challenging questions. This is not a left or right issue or racist. It is about global social and environmental sustainability.

Here is an update on current overdevelopment trends in Melbourne, by Mary Drost, of Planning Backlash, with references to height and density, the Property Council of Australia, safety and a new activist group, Victorian Building Action Group.

Well finally the government say they are going to limit building heights in the city.   Bit too late as far as I  can see.  Imagine  that  we have higher density in our city than New York or Hong Kong!!!!!.   And they also say they are going to consult with developers and residents. Can you imagine what the developers will be saying? Let us see if the government has the courage to do it against the wishes of developers. But it seems they are not setting height limits, only density.

http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/melbourne-city-height-limits-to-hit-new-ceiling-20160425-goec15

The Property Council at it again. They are now demanding that Councils hand over land for development.    What a cheek.   Peoples rates buy the land that is used for car parking and the land is needed.

http://www.theage.com.au/business/property/councils-sitting-on-550m-worth-of-development-sites-suitable-for-housing-20160426-gof9yv.html

Well, banks are stopping lending to foreign buyers  - that is good news and in another item, the government are increasing the tax on foreign buyers. Still not high enough tax to be a deterrent. Not like smart Singapore who put on a 20% tax, and that stopped it.

http://www.smh.com.au/business/property/westpac-stops-lending-to-foreign-property-investors-20160427-gofza6.html

There was recently news of the wall collapse. Now there's another one. Here is the link.You might also like to look at the Facebook of the Victorian Building Action Group, whose issue is the shonky building going on in Victoria and what it is doing to people.

Here is some information on the wall collapse:

These ‘accidents’ are a daily occurrence – here are two on one day!

Re the wall collapse – here are two links: (1.) The Age 20 April 2016: ‘Wall collapse: How the system failed’: http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/wall-collapses-at-north-melbourne-construction-site-20160420-goakg3.html

This has a short video attached.

(2.) 20 April 2016 Wall collapses at North Melbourne building site: WorkSafe on the scene’: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-04-20/worksafe-investigates-wall-collapse-in-north-melbourne/7341110

Our record on safety, just like our record on building, is worse every day!

To keep up-to-date, Victorian Building Action Group Facebook
at:https://www.facebook.com/vicbuildingactiongroup/

Video and text of Sheila Newman's speech at the Animal Justice Party's event, "Policy basis for Kangaroo treatment in the ACT," 5 April 2016: Harvesting, damage mitigation and culling probably actually accelerate population growth in roos because the smaller ones survive and adapt by sexually maturing earlier - which speeds up fertility turnover. Since 2003 DNA studies have shown that ACT and southern NSW roos, both male and female, migrate at significant rates and for longer distances than the ACT model assumes. Migration has probably been mistaken for fertility, rendering ACT roo counts unreliable and invalid. The ACT needs to stop culling and widen its research base to consider various genetically based algorithms that naturally restrain fertility opportunities in kangaroos.

Examples include separate gender pathways, with 'sexual segregation' where male and female populations live apart. It is likely that the stable presence of mature dominant males and females in family and mob organisation inhibits sexual maturity and activity as has been shown in studies of other species, such as macaques and superb fairy wrens (the latter cooperative breeders). In humans, girls brought up with step-fathers who came late to the family were more likely to mature sexually earlier due to absence of Westermarck Effect.)

Planned wildlife corridors need to be made safe and long-term viable to cope with people, car and kangaroo population movements.

Canberra is pursuing a policy of rapid population growth, mostly through invited economic immigration.

Canberra's population problem

In June 2016 ACT - South West Australian Capital Territory was the fastest growing area in Australia and grew by 127.3%. (ABS http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/[email protected]/mf/3218.0)
 
Canberra’s population could increase to 904,000 by 2061 according to new projections released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics. It's not inevitable, but the government would like you to believe it is.
 
Predicting a population growth of at least 98 per cent within 50 years, ACT population projections for 2061 suggest that the Australian Capital Territory population could exceed Tasmania's population by 2038.

But some think that the ACT's biggest problem is its kangaroo population

It's not the new suburbs, the new roads, the new airport, the additional schools, hospitals, houses, and all the new cars that threaten Canberra's grasslands: it's the eastern grey kangaroos.

It seems that it is better to have cattle in Canberra's nature parks than kangaroos.

Ecological cattle grazing is now being trialed. Cattle can be more easily moved than kangaroos. (Fletcher, Senior Ecologist, communication to P. Machin.)

Although, Fletcher had previously described the devastation cattle made to grass cover in no uncertain terms: "Fletcher Phd: p.37. “70 pregnant cows and four bulls grazed for ten weeks at Tidbinbilla after a bushfire in January 2003 (Section 3.5.1). Prior to their arrival, there had been an atypical abundance of pasture due to the death of almost half of the Tidbinbilla kangaroos in the bushfire, but by the time the cattle were removed, the Tidbinbilla pasture had been reduced to the lowest herbage mass recorded on any site during the study.”
"

ACT Kangaroo Management Policy works on a model that all creatures maximize their population growth and that Canberra's roos are riding an expansive curve which can only be capped by massive frequent culls. A stated fear is that they will otherwise graze and drastically modify biodiversity of Canberra's grasslands. Another is that roos need periodically to be shot so as to save them from starving to death.

Why culling is better than harvesting (ACT Senior Ecologist, Don Fletcher)

"[…] the model indicates that commercial harvesting (currently under trial in the region, at the maximum level allowed, results in a sustainable harvest of kangaroos, but does not increase the herbage mass, and only slightly reduces the frequency of crashes when herbage mass falls to low levels. (To demonstrate this with an ecological experiment would require an extremely large investment of research effort.)

However, an alternative 'national park damage mitigation' formula, which holds kangaroo density to about 1 ha -1 , is predicted to increase herbage mass considerably and to reduce the frequency of crashes in herbage mass, but these effects would be achieved at the cost of having to shoot large numbers of kangaroos." (Fletcher Phd: Population dynamics of Eastern Grey Kangaroos in Temperate Grasslands, 2006, p. vi.)

The model and the reality

The ACT Roo Management model is one of high fertility sedentary populations that rarely migrate, grazing grasslands down to the subsoil. But, in his 2006 thesis, p. 237, Senior ACT Kangaroo management ecologist, Donald Fletcher, tested this model and found, to his surprise, that,

"The study did not provide evidence that high densities of kangaroos reduce groundcover to the levels where erosion can accelerate.

Unmanaged kangaroo populations did not necessarily result in low levels of ground cover. Groundcover had a positive but not significant relationship to kangaroo density, with the highest cover at the wettest site where kangaroo density was highest. Weather has an important influence on groundcover."

"The results from the study as a whole indicate that unmanaged kangaroo populations did not necessarily result in unacceptably low levels of ground cover." (Fletcher Phd: p.231.

The Kangaroo Migration factor

Since 2003 DNA studies have shown that ACT and southern NSW roos, both male and female, migrate at significant rates and for longer distances than the ACT model assumes. 

Migration has probably been mistaken for fertility, rendering ACT kangaroo counts unreliable and probably invalid.

DNA studies 2003 show migration a strong factor

Zenger et al (2003)[1] found that mitrochondrial DNA samples indicated about 22.61 individuals per generation migrated with a range of 8.17-59.30. In female immigrants the range was 2.73 with a range of 0.60-12.16. Although females demonstrate smaller migration rates compared to the sexes combined, the values are still comparatively high. Analysis across NSW showed populations separated by up to about 230km had equivalent numbers of close relatives when compared to populations only about 20km apart.

This contradicted field study opinion that migration was low in eastern grey kangaroos, and especially low in females in the ACT. Tidbinbilla (a Canberra nature park studied by Fletcher) featured in the Zenger et al study.

Zenger MtDNA findings contrary to Migration views in Fletcher thesis

"Throughout their lives eastern grey kangaroos are relatively sedentary (Johnson 1989) compared to red kangaroos (Priddel 1987). A partly concurrent study of eastern grey kangaroo habitat use and movements on the Googong and Tidbinbilla sites found the eastern grey kangaroos on these sites were sedentary in all seasons (minimum convex polygon mean size 0.43 km 2 ± 0.06 SE and 0.61 km 2 ± 0.08 respectively; Viggers and Hearn 2005). Kangaroos were not radio tracked at Gudgenby but my observations suggest there is no more movement of eastern grey kangaroos on and off the site there than at Tidbinbilla. Thus it is likely there was little net movement of kangaroos on and off the study sites." (Fletcher, page v.)

Paradoxical impact of Culls, kills and Harvests

Harvesting, damage mitigation and culling probably actually accelerate population growth in roos because the smaller ones survive and adapt by sexually maturing earlier - which speeds up fertility turnover.

Harvested stock grow smaller, breed earlier, faster

"Smaller, earlier breeding genetic stock tend to escape harvesting". See, e.g. J.J. Poosa, A. Brannstrom, U. Dieckmann, “Harvest-induced maturation evolution under different life-history trade-offs and harvesting regimes.” (See note for more literature on this.)[2]

Fletcher, on estimates of biomass consumption per roo allows for large variations in harvested populations vs wild populations.

"How big are eastern grey kangaroos?
The mean live weight of eastern grey kangaroos taken from the unshot population at Tidbinbilla was 29 kg – smaller than the 35 kg mean live weight assumed in the Kinchega kangaroo study (Caughley et al. 1987). Based on the size relationship between shot and unshot populations of kangaroos in South Australia and Queensland (Grigg 2000), the mean size of eastern grey kangaroos in equivalent shot populations was predicted to be 17 kg live weight. The minimum dressed size accepted by operators of commercial chillers is 17 kg, implying that many of the kangaroos in shot populations (on rural properties) in the ACT region are too small to attract commercial shooters."(Fletcher, p.242.)

Culling has a similar effect.

Earlier maturation would contribute to higher population growth rates. What role does harvesting, culling and farm mitigation killing play in accelerating breeding rates?

“Smaller, eat less, more numerous, more fecund", reproduce earlier

“The management implications arising from this study are numerous and a full account would require a separate report. As one example, kangaroos in these temperate grasslands are on average smaller, eat less, are more numerous, and are more fecund, than would be predicted
from other studies (e.g. Caughley et al. 1987). Thus the benefit of shooting each kangaroo, in terms of grass production, is less, or, in other words, more kangaroos have to be shot to achieve a certain level of impact reduction, and the population will recover more quickly, than would have been predicted prior to this study.” (Fletcher, p245.)

Kangaroos shot in Tidbinbilla and low weight in shot populations

“The mean live weight of eastern grey kangaroos in high density populations can be estimated from the weights of a sample of 332 kangaroos shot at Tidbinbilla in June 1997 (Graeme Coulson, personal communication, 2003) to be 29 kg. (That is an adjustment of the actual mean liveweight of the shot sample, 26.4 kg, to allow for seasonal effects, as explained in Discussion. Kangaroos in shot populations, such as on grazing properties, are likely to be smaller due to selective harvesting, also explained in Discussion).”(Fletcher p.242.)

Wider Research Base needed

In my view, the ACT needs to stop culling and widen its research base to consider encouraging various genetically based behaviours that naturally restrain fertility opportunities in roos.

Known examples include

incest avoidance, which limits breeding unless animals can disperse to their own territory. [3]
Sexual segregation and gender pathways, where male and female populations live apart. 

Incest avoidance as a spatial limiter of breeding opportunity

Many examples of suppressed maturity or breeding in both males and females close by related adults in many species. (Sheila Newman, Demography Territory Law: Rules of animal and human populations, Countershock Press, 2013, chapter 3.) (Paperback edition and Kindle edition.)

In kangaroos male sexual dominance and monopolisation of females is a very obvious trait. (The effect of dominant close females on female maturation is less known and should be investigated as it has been in other species).

Where large males and females are removed from mobs, these limiting population effects are also removed. What happens then?

Kinship rules and incest avoidance

The following diagram is of human kinship rules, however similar patterns of incest avoidance occur in other species, and in kangaroos. The diagram for humans is split into family and in-laws and sets out some typical rules for incest avoidance in low fertility environments - central Australia and mountainous South Korea. The rules for inlaws are reproduced back to front to demonstrate a mirror-like effect. The person in the top left corner, 'You" may not conceive/marry any of the people in the black squares. That leaves only eight possible mates - as long as they are not already married. Imagine how hard it would be to find a wife or husband under these circumstances in a sparsely populated society of small clans that only travelled on foot, without cars, planes or boats. In a more fertile environment, the rules of incest avoidance are usually much less strict, as in Leviticus, where people may marry their first cousins - giving much greater fertility opportunities, even without the benefit of modern transport. For more about this and how it affects human economies see: "Overpopulation: Endogamy,Exogamy and fertility opportunity theory"

The following two diagrams are from Zenger et al (2003).
They show the regions from which their eastern grey kangaroo DNA samples were taken, and they give a 'family tree' of roo DNA diversity, which shows greatly decreased diversity in north NSW and in Queensland. The authors could find no explanation for this.

Possible explanation for decreased Mt DNA in Queensland & Northern NSW

Harvesting has gone on for a long time in these regions. We know it is associated with marked size decrease. It seems likely that it is also associated with earlier sexual maturity. Consider the possibility that, as well as size decrease and earlier sexual maturation in harvested populations, the decrease in genetic diversity present in those populations may be due to inbreeding resulting from loss of family structure and associated incest avoidance, with decreased migration as small early maturing roos settle for their siblings. There seems little will to investigate this. Although there is some literature, it is very limited. (See note [2].)

Sexual Segregation/Gender pathways

Review of Scientific Literature Relevant to the Commercial Harvest Management of Kangaroos http://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/resources/nature/110641Kangaroolitreview.pdf

“Sexual segregation is a phenomenon seen in many species, with segregation occurring along behavioural or ecological dimensions. Sexual segregation in western grey and red kangaroos in semi - arid Victoria has been the subject of intensive investigations since the last review.

[…] MacFarlane and Coulson (2005) investigated the effects of mating activity, group […] composition, spatial distribution and habitat selection on sexual segregation in western grey and red kangaroos. The synchrony and timing of mating activity was seen to influence the magnitude and timing of social segregation in these species, with mixed sex groups predominating during the breeding season. …

… Spatial segregation and habitat segregation were also seen. Although the magnitude of these types of segregation were weaker, they were both still significantly influenced by synchrony and timing of breeding.

Coulson et al. (2006) discussed sexual segregation at three levels (habitat, social and dietary) and confirmed that both size and sex influence segregation.

MacFarlane and Coulson (2009) showed that the need for males to maintain contact with other males (perhaps to develop important fighting skills, evaluate rivals and establish a dominance hierarchy) might also promote sexual segregation.

Similarly Nave (2002) reported evidence of sexual segregation in eastern grey kangaroos in Victoria.”

What are the consequences of loss of sex-specific territory?

Years ago a man who had worked in PNG told me that fertility shot up when churches convinced men and women to cohabit, where previously they had separate land and houses.

What effect could reduction of habitat, forced cohabitation, forcibly changed migration routes and wiped out populations have on male/female kangaroo territory and consequently on fertility opportunities?

How do we know that the female bias (recorded by Fletcher) at Tinbinburra, for instance, is not due to that area being female territory?

Female elder kangaroos

Daughters seem to learn from their mothers to look after joeys. Where female kangaroos are early orphaned their parenting skill may increase risks in joey upbringing. The extraordinary rates of joey mortality may have something to do with this. (See Faces in the Mob for a study of success and failure in raising joeys in one mob.)

In conclusion, regarding ACT Kangaroo management:

It seems that ACT Roo Management Policy and Science:

- Fails to monitor family structure (spatial population monitoring)
- Fails to deal with size reduction, fertility increases probably related to culls etc
- Fails to look at behaviour; notably breeding limitations exerted through incest avoidance/dominance and separate male/female territory
- Underestimates immigration (See Zenger et al)
- Fails to use DNA monitoring to help in the above
- Seems excessively presumptive and mechanistic

NOTES

[1] Zenger et al DNA study 2003: (Heredity (2003) 91, 153–162. doi:10.1038/sj.hdy.6800293, K R Zenger, M D B Eldridge and D W Cooper, "Intraspecific variation, sex-biased dispersal and phylogeography of the eastern grey kangaroo (Macropus giganteus)."
http://www.nature.com/hdy/journal/v91/n2/full/6800293a.html)

[2] Harvesting impact literature: Many of these studies arise from fish stocks. Articles quoting studies for kangaroos tend to quote from the same very small amount of literature and to draw equivocal conclusions, frequently paraphrasing each other. Peter T. Hale, "Genetic effects of kangaroo harvesting", Australian Mammalogy 26:75-86 (2004)http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.319.7936&rep=rep1&type=pdf seems to be the main work cited, but relies on studies which Fletcher's Phd calls into question, has little to say about eastern grey kangaroos but seems to infer that they have similar rates of starvation attributed to red kangaroos.

In Review of Scientific Literature Relevant to the Commercial Harvest Management of Kangaroos (2011) http://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/resources/nature/110641Kangaroolitreview.pdf  , pp.27-28, after flagging the potential impact of harvesting on kangaroos, the study concludes with a mere opinion that the impact of size and other harvesting selection on kangaroos probably would not be great, on the assumption that the harvested populations are not isolated. This is pretty much as Hale's study (above) concludes. However we know that the harvested populations in northern NSW and Queensland are genetically isolated and impoverished according to Zenger et all (2003) cited above. Furthermore, the review showed it was aware of Zenger et al.

"The last two reviews concluded that there was no evidence, or potential, that commercial harvesting could alter the genetic structure of kangaroo populations at current harvesting levels (Olsen and
Braysher 2000, Olsen and Low 2006). It was perceived that kangaroo populations would have to be
reduced to very low levels for genetic impacts to become significant (Olsen and Braysher 2000).
Moreover, at the time of the last review, it was concluded that there was an absence of theoretical,
empirical and modelled evidence of genetic impacts at current levels of harvesting” (Olsen and Low
2006, p50) and there were few, if any,examples of harvest‐induced body size selection in terrestrial
vertebrates. While there have not been any studies specifically investigating the potential genetic
impacts of harvesting kangaroos since the last review, there have been a large number of original
research and review papers addressing this question in a range of other vertebrate species,
highlighting the perception that the potential genetic consequences of harvesting may be significant

The human harvest of wild animals is generally not a random process, with harvesters often
selecting phenotypically desirable animals, e.g. those with a large body size or elaborate weaponry,
such as antlers. This therefore has the potential to impose selective pressure on wild populations,
which may result in an alteration to population structure by reducing the frequency of these
desirable phenotypes and/or an overall loss of genetic variation (Allendorf et al. 2008). 
Allendorf and Hard (2009) have termed this process “unnatural selection”, which is defined as undesirable changes in an exploited population due to selection against desirable phenotypes. Cited examples of the
effects of selective harvesting on desirable phenotypes include an increase in the number of tuskless elephants (Loxodonta africana) in South Luanga National Park, Zambia, and a decrease in horn size
of bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis) because of trophy hunting (reviewed in Allendrof and Hard
2009). In the case of bighorn sheep, the observed genotypic and phenotypic effects resulted from
selective harvesting of young males with rapidly growing horns a trait linked with high reproductive
success) before they reached an age where they could achieve high reproductive success (Coltman
et al. 2003).  This study highlights the importance of understanding age-specific trait size, rather
than trait size per se. 

A recent review by Mysterud (2011) discusses the relative importance of various biotic and abiotic
factors that determine the potential for selective pressure from harvesting. In particular, Mysterud
highlights the importance of assessing selective harvesting within the context of management
regulations, hunting methods, animal trait variance, behaviour and abundance. Mysterud argues that in many cultures large mammal harvesting is not expected to produce strong directional
selection in trait size.

 Although many of the factors discussed are of greater relevance to traditional
sport hunting, this review highlights the importance of a number of factors relevant to the
commercial harvesting of kangaroos in Australia. 

There is certainly evidence for selective harvesting of larger/older animals within kangaroo
populations, primarily because the economic performance of kangaroo harvesting enterprises is
highly sensitive to variations in average carcase weight (Stayner 2007). Between 1997 and 2009 the
total harvest in NSW comprised between 70 and 89% males. In the case of wallaroos, the
commercial take is even more strongly biased towards males (almost 90%), because females rarely
reach the minimum size dictated by licence and market conditions (Payne 2011). Despite the
preference for larger males, it was reported that harvesters target a range of sizes above the
minimum, especially when densities are reduced and there are fewer target animals (Payne 2011).
There average weight of harvested animals supports this assertion [(Table 2)]. 

As reported in the last review (Olsen and Low 2006), studies on the potential effects of size-selective harvesting in kangaroos concluded that although there was potential for genetic consequences of
harvesting within a closed population (Tenhumberg et al. 2004), the degree of mobility and
geographic range of genetic populations of kangaroos would be sufficient to ensure that any
localised effects could be countered by immigration (Hale 2004). So, the question remains: does the
recent literature on this topic provide any basis for changing the previous conclusions?

Probably not.

In the big horn sheep example referred to above, the extent of selective harvesting pressure was
probably much stronger than occurs in kangaroo populations. In addition, the population was small,
isolated and had restricted potential for immigration (Coltman et al. 2003), thereby exhibiting
characteristics akin to a closed population. As such, this probably represents a more extreme
example, where prevailing management and biological factors combined to create strong selective
pressure."

Penny Olsen and Tim Low, "Situation Analysis Report, Update on Current State of Scientific Knowledge on Kangaroos in the Environment, Including Ecological and Economic Impact and Effect of Culling," School of Botany and Zoology, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT and 6 Henry Street, Chapel Hill, Queensland, Prepared for the Kangaroo Management Advisory Panel, March 2006

Proceedings of the 2010 RSPCA Australia Scientific Seminar: Convergence or conflict: animal welfare in wildlife management and conservation, Tuesday 23 February 2010, CSIRO Discovery Centre, Canberra https://www.rspca.org.au/files/website/The-facts/Science/Scientific-Seminar/2010/SciSem2010-Proceedings.pdf
[3] Family structure/westermarck/incest avoidance/endogamy/exogamy: Sheila Newman, Demography, Territory, Law: Rules of animal and human populations, Countershock Press, 2013, Chapter 3, “CHAPTER 3: The urge to disperse: Why children don’t usually marry their parents.” (Available amazon.com) Examples of incest avoidance citations within:

"Several studies have shown that maternal relatives avoid mating with one another (rhesus macaques: Smith, 1995; red colobus, Procolobus badius temminckii: Starin, 2001; Japanese macaques: Takahata et al., 2002; and see for review: Moore, 1993; van Noordwijk and van Schaik, 2004), 88 but less is known concerning patterns of inbreeding avoidance between paternal relatives (but see Alberts, 1999). In this study, we showed that the probability of paternity by a dominant male decreased when he was related to the dam at R = .5 (the highest possible relatedness coefficient in our study). Smith (1995) showed in rhesus macaques that the intensity of inbreeding avoidance was directly correlated with the closeness of kinship, as in the mandrills studied here. ”

Marie Charpentier, Patricia Peignot, Martine Hossaert-McKey, Olivier Gimenez, Joanna M. Setchell, and E. Jean Wickings., 2005. “Constraints on control: factors influencing reproductive success in male mandrills (Mandrillus sphinx).” Behavioral Ecology 16:614–623]

More reference examples on incest avoidance in multiple species:

Hoier, S., 2003. “Father absence and the age of menarch, A test of four evolutionary models,” Human Nature, Vol. 14, No. 3, pp. 209–233, Walter de Gruyter, Inc., New York.
Cockburn A, Osmond HL, Mulder RA, Green DJ, Douvle MC, 2003. Divorce, dispersal and incest avoidance in the cooperatively breeding superb fairy-wren Malurus cyaneus. J Anim Ecol 185 72:189–202;
Griffin AS, Pemberton JM, Brotherton PNM, McIlrath G, Gaynor D, Kansky R, O'Riain J, Clutton-Brock TH, 2003. A genetic analysis of breeding success in the cooperative meerkat (Suricata suricatta). Behav Ecol 14:472–480;
Mateo JM, 2003. Kin recognition in ground squirrels and other rodents. J Mammal 84:1163–1181;
Pusey A, Wolf M, 1996. Inbreeding avoidance in animals. Trends Ecol Evol 11:201–206;
Stow AJ, Sunnucks P, 2004. Inbreeding avoidance in Cunningham's skinks (Egernia cunninghami) in natural and fragmented habitat. Mol Ecol 13:443–447;
Yu XD, Sun RY, Fang JM, 2004. Effect of kinship on social behaviors in Brandt's voles (Microtus brandti). J Ethol 22:17–22.

Saturday April 23 rd at 1.00pm to 4.00 pm. Venue: Hawthorn Arts Centre, 360 Burwood Rd. Hawthorn Vic 3122. Members and non-members are welcome to attend. Speakers are: Mark Allen, Founder, Population, Permaculture and Planning; Dr Katharine Betts, Population Sociologist, Swinburne University; Hon Kelvin Thomson MP, Environmentalist and high profile sustainable population advocate; Rod Quantock, Environmental activist, Much loved comedian. M.C. SPAVicTas President Michael Bayliss. Audience Q&A and discussion will follow (Free parking behind venue or at nearby Glenferrie Station).

All Welcome

All welcome to come and join in this free public afternoon seminar and discussion!

Speakers

Mark Allen, Founder, Population, Permaculture and Planning
Dr Katharine Betts, Population Sociologist, Swinburne University
Hon Kelvin Thomson MP, Environmentalist and high profile sustainable population advocate
Rod Quantock, Environmental activist, Much loved comedian
M.C. SPAVicTas President Michael Bayliss.

Audience Q&A and discussion will follow

Attitudes and communication in population and the environment
Venue: Hawthorn Arts Centre, 360 Burwood Rd. Hawthorn Vic 3122
Members and non-members are welcome to attend (free parking behind venue or at nearby Glenferrie Station)
www.population.org.au

Further details: Jill Quirk jillq[AT]optusnet.com.au 0409742927

It is just possible that the terrorist attack warnings by both the PM and ASIO head, Duncan Lewis, and the announcement of a hefty hike in defence spending was just a coincidence. But for those cynics who claim otherwise, let me point out that at this very moment we already have more than 1000 (perhaps as many as 4000) terrorists running riot in Canberra and doing so with the full knowledge and encouragement of our government.

It is just possible that the terrorist attack warnings by both the PM and ASIO head, Duncan Lewis, and the announcement of a hefty hike in defence spending was just a coincidence. But for those cynics who claim otherwise, let me point out that at this very moment we already have more than 1000 (perhaps as many as 4000) terrorists running riot in Canberra and doing so with the full knowledge and encouragement of our government.

These agents of destruction are of course working undercover as lobbyists, but what ever their name tag, they do far more damage than their religiously inspired equivalent. Consider the onslaught on our country made by clients of the Minerals Council, projects that have laid waste to some of our best agricultural land and compromised our water supplies. ISIS would need nuclear weapons to inflict that sort of damage.

Lobbyists are a gifted body of saboteurs that have managed to infiltrate federal and state governments, turning successive environmental ministers into rubber stamps for whatever 'significant' project they want approved. Not content with having these ministers in their pockets, it seems to me that the big guns, Gina Rinehart, Clive Palmer and Andrew Forest were more than just instrumental in squashing both the mining super profit and the carbon tax, the proceeds of which would have gone a long way to fixing the budget. Now it appears they have the CSIRO in their sights, cutting funding into research into those areas which might embarrass fossil fuel advocates.

If the Mineral Council had a couple of environment ministers and ex PM Tony Abbott as unquestioning supporters, then their co-conspirator, the Property Council, have gone one better. It seems their undercover work has so emasculated the government's tax reform debate that the PM was forced to take their line on preserving negative gearing. This group of unelected influence-mongers have managed to usurp the state planning authorities and now have the power to abscond with public land, rail corridors, museums, and to beggar mortgage-stressed home buyers, leaving the nation with 1.6 trillion dollars in private debt.(http://www.dailyreckoning.com.au/why-has-australian-household-debt-tripled-in-the-last-25-years-cw/2015/06/18/) .

During this rampage their clients, the developers and financiers, easily managed to outperform the unions and are right up there with FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football). Some of the proceeds from a $10b ponzi scam in India have been directed into Gold Coast real estate market after, of course, the complementary political donations , doubtless more details will show who got what.

While discussing councils it would be unfair to dismiss the humble efforts of the Food and Grocery Council (F&GC). They don't have much to do with grocers but have a lot to do with food, particularly soft drinks and fast food, which pay more than the stuff farmers produce and which we call fresh food. The above groups have come under a lot of scrutiny because of their role in our obesity crisis which costs, according to who you believe, $21b/year in medical costs and lot more in the abstract, meaning not dollar-costed concept, of wellbeing . So it seems that the F&GC have been able to ward off the scientific studies done by health and medical experts and convince the government health ministers that, despite this high cost to health, cutting back our intake of fast food and sugery drinks would wreck havoc with the economy. To put their achievement into better perspective, about 70 Australians a week are having amputations as a result of preventable diabetes-related complications, a rate of injury that surpasses casualties in every war we have particapated in since WW2.

However before giving the F&GC an award for best lobbyists, it should be pointed out that the various state and federal health departments are less than enthusiastic to take on multi-national corporations even on health issues. This can be seen by their failure to act on the numerous health reports that have fingered coal as a major health hazard. One report that appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald (The Coal and Health in the Hunter report by the Climate and Health Alliance (.pdf) ) put the health cost, just in the Hunter valley alone, as $600m per year, while the US government puts a social cost of $47 per tonne of CO2 admitted by coal combustion. The Australian report went on to note: "There's a total disassociation of who gets the benefits and who gets the pain,” which just about sums up the current attitude of governments. However if we lump coal into the rest of the fossil fuel industries, gas and oil, we get a better idea of their success at influencing government policy. A report by the Australia Institute (Why do we subsidise industry? | The Australia Institute) puts the cost of subsidies given to the fossil fuel industry at $10b per year, which compares favourably with the $1.5b the car industry received over a four year period. As part of our shrinking manufacturing industry this was one that, not only added to innovation, but employed about 1 million people. Perhaps the manufacturing organisation should change its lobbyists.

There of course many other lobbyists with a range of interests and influence including clubs, hospitals, private health funds, sporting organisations, private schools, business and hotels, that have all successfully challenged government policy and the public interest, notably in liquor and gambling, but also in other less noticeable ways, like drugs that are added to the PBS. And they do so in different ways. The Australian Centre for Independent Journalism found, in a survey of major metropolitan newspapers published in Australia in 2010, that 55 per cent of content was driven by public relations handouts from lobbyists and their associated public relations arms, and 24 per cent of the content of those metropolitan newspapers had no significant journalistic input whatsoever, relying heavily on public relations handouts. Many of the so-called economic experts we read, hear and see on our media are in the employment of the banks and accounting firms, or belong to so called 'think tanks' such as the Institute of Public Affairs, which are secretly funded and act as fronts for vested interests with their own self-interested agendas. Given the continued decline in media revenue and the loss of serious journalists, this situation can only get worse.

Australia's capacity to tackle important public issues – such as climate change, income inequality, tax avoidance, political donations, indigenous welfare, population growth, and housing affordability – is diminishing because of the power of vested interests, with their lobbying power to influence governments in a quite disproportionate way. Professor Ross Garnaut described it as a "diabolical problem" a sentiment echoed by Ken Henry, a former secretary of Treasury, and Martin Parkinson his successor, who has warned about "vested interests" who seek concessions from government at the expense of ordinary citizens.

But nothing is being done about it.

Estonian House, West Brunswick, 24th February
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The crux of this meeting, as presented by Moreland planning staff, is that the previous agreement was voided root-and-branch by the State Government, and in the newly planned Neighbourhood Centres, the allocated zones have been changed somewhat (no-one seemed to recall being given prior notice) and also the previously agreed 3-storey limits (all achieved by quite verbally violent public activity!) have morphed into 4-storey. In the course of the meeting it turned out that 4-storey was not 4-storey mandatory but 4-storey discretionary! The council "hoped" they could make them mandatory. It was impossible despite direct and explicit questioning to find out what was the actual upper height limit is right now, or even if there is an upper height limit.

As previously, there was the muffled threat that this new version of suburban planning, which can only increase occupier density in a municipality with the highest or second highest density in greater Melbourne, was driven by State Government (of a different stripe, but the threat remained the same), and the heavy implication that it might be worse if we did not agree.

There was much volatile discussion around the apparently arbitrary re-drawing of new boundaries---there must always be unfortunate residents who end up next to or surrounded by, possible huge overshadowing apartment blocks whereas across the road it is different.

The Planning guy ( who seemed rather embarrassed; I felt a bit sorry for him) admitted the historically, and also recent, appalling standard of erections in Moreland and also said the Council wished to enforce more stringent standards of good design and superior build quality, but again admitted on questioning that these would also be discretionary.

Others raised the issue of the effect of massive 1-2 bedroom blocks on the current family demographic of this pocket of Moreland. And obviously the failure to account for parallel improvement in infrastructure, most notably public transport but also water, sewage etc. was acknowledged but this point was avoided because all this was a matter for the State and not the Council. Likewise the effect on rates was avoided.

Others had direct stories of fighting developers, achieving modifications on paper which were ignored in concrete, and achieving no redress because what standards there were could be flouted. The stress and anxiety caused by these fights at council and VCAT levels, and the necessity for constant vigilance, were raised quite emotionally by a couple of unfortunates.

An interesting but telling tiny detail was that there were a number of booths set up in Estonian House with Council brochures (the ones with the ridiculously scaled artist's impression illustrating the wide and gracious Boulevarde de Melville). Some residents (who had after all paid for the rent of the hall) also placed sheafs of counter-suggestions and blanks for letters of objection to the proposals in these booths. These disappeared immediately, some were replenished and again they vanished within a minute or two. The presumption is they were taken by council staff who were roving around at all times.

Another interesting detail was that, as far as was visible, we were not graced by the presence of a single councillor.

I went to the one [meeting] at Pascoe Vale neighbourhood Community Hall. People were hostile. They [Council staff] said they were seeking community input for their submission. One resident said;

'Is it going to be like last time when you had the Moreland Rezoning Community consultations. You didn't give an accurate account of our opinions in your submission. No mention how residents opposed increased density, wanted greater protection etc. Instead you said things like, residents wanted better quality apartments etc. What a load of bullshit, you lot are going to do what you want?'

Another lady… said:

'I'm reading through this handout. This is basically a bribe. You're telling us to accept the four storey height limit, because if we don't we'll end up with ten storeys. '

Council officer tried to deny it, but the lady kept pressing and pressing the point that this is a bribe, until the officer admitted in a round about way 'as it stands, developers can apply to build beyond 4 storeys, if we don't have height limits, so we have to put something in place. '

In the draft 1.1 of Neighbourhood Centres Strategy, it states that Plan Melbourne promotes density in defined locations to support a 20minute neighbourhood, where residents will have access to a wide range of local amenities and services. My husband (a Brunswick boy) stood up and said:

'This 20 minute concept was intended for new estate areas. Any residents living in Moreland can already access services and amenities within 20minutes. Within 20min I can be in Brunswick, Coburg, Hospitals in Parkville, Airport West, Essendon DFO, Northland, Moonee Ponds. We don't need density to support the 20min neighbourhood concept. We have it already.’

The artist impression showed block after block of 4 storey apartments surrounding the Pascoe Vale Station, where supposedly people will be able to shop and work near where there live. The station is at the bottom of Gaffney Street hill and commuters take up a lot of parking at the station and in surrounding streets. So where will people park to do their shopping and how many people will walk back up the hill with their shopping? Zilch! They'll go to supermarkets with big car parks. Someone asked if any of these shops and offices, beneath these apartments are going to provide jobs that can pay the mortgage or rent. Are they going to be big volume employers like manufacturing firms in the past, who employed a lot of local residents? Then the officer said:

'The nature of employment has changed from the manufacturing of the past. We're seeing more self employed looking for workspaces close to home. For example, there's a Brunswick artist who is renting a studio close to home.'

Someone sarcastically asked: 'so this artist is going to employ a lot of local people?'

In his Moreland Rezoning submission, Ernest Healy, a former researcher in planning and population at Monash University, has pointed out that 85% of Moreland residents worked outside the municipality. He questioned Council's ability to encourage Moreland residents to work locally.

Questions were also asked about where schools, infrastructure, waste management and services, for example ambulance and hospitals, came into play with all this density. They are becoming overstretched. Strathmore Secondary had to knock back 200 students, including those in the zone. Four portables had to be delivered to Strathmore Secondary and Pascoe Vale Primary, encroaching in playgrounds. Many schools are converting storage areas, locker bays and shelter sheds into classrooms. If density continues, the children won't have a playground. A paramedic I know said hospitals bypasses are increasing…

This madness has to stop. [The mess on] rubbish days in some streets around here is getting worse. So much for the Greens thinking high density is environmentally friendly.

Moreland residents are presently being treated to a new round of ‘consultations’ throughout the municipality, and being indoctrinated by Council staff on the assumed benefits of residential rezoning (radically increased residential densities) and of neighbourhood activity centres as a central feature of the ’20-minute city’. Under this new feudalism, it is expected that residents will access all of their basic material needs and services within a 20 minute walk, bicycle trip, or by public transport. Superficially this may seem a nice idea. On closer scrutiny it is fanciful, so expensive that the necessary additional infrastructure will never be provided, and little more than a pretext for an atrophied Australian business culture dependent upon population growth and capital widening; incapable of building a genuinely modern economy. Selling dirt to China and building a national ponzi economy based on population growth and making each other cappuccinos. Dumb and dumber dressed up as community building and environmental responsibility, but, very politically fashionable – so much so that the left enthusiastically does the economic right’s public relations for it. The Greens on the Moreland Council are a case in point.

That the Moreland Council is conducting a new round of ‘consultations’ on the new feudalism is curious. This is because of the abject failure of the previous round of ‘consultations’ on residential rezoning under the Napthine Coalition government and the subsequent betrayal of Moreland residents on the issue by the Andrews Labor government. The overwhelming message from residents to the pro-density fundamentalism of Council and the Victorian government the first time round was an emphatic rejection of higher residential densities. At the time, the resounding rejection of higher densities by residents served to expose the faux democratic sentiment of the Council planning elite, when Council was subsequently advised, in an official report on the rezoning consultations, that Council should not feel bound to follow mainstream opinion on the rezoning issue anyway.

The latest round of faux consultation is all the more curious because Council’s 2014 rezoning proposal (put to the Coalition government in mid-2014), which at best represented a compromise between the densities that the Moreland city planners were promoting and resident objections to higher densities, was subsequently rejected by the new Labor planning minister, Richard Wynne. As detailed below, the newly elected Victorian Labor government essentially gutted the Moreland compromise rezoning proposal of the key measures that would have preserved some semblance of low-density neighbourhood character in the Neighbourhood Residential Zone.

As thing stand, the current ‘consultations’ are being conducted in a climate of angry disbelief on the part of residents who carry feelings of insult from being treated contemptuously the first time round. Yet, Council and the Victorian Labor government simply proceed as if residents have the word ‘idiot’ tattooed on their foreheads.

Background:

From late 2013 to mid 2014, a drawn out and at times heated struggle took place between various resident groups within the municipality of Moreland and the Moreland City Council over the implementation of new residential zones, which foreshadowed a radical increase in residential densities within the City.
Prior to the demise of the Bracks/Brumby Victorian Labor government in late 2010, Labor had indicated that it would pursue a policy of limiting residential growth in some suburban locations within Melbourne, facilitating rapid residential growth in other areas, and allowing intermediate growth in others. On coming to government, the Coalition ran with this three zone residential policy approach, which became a source of heated, ongoing contestation in several local government areas. Moreland was amongst them.
Under the Coalition Government, local governments were charged with formulating proposals for the implementation of three residential zones largely differentiated by the levels of density that each zone would facilitate. Moreland city Council therefore also undertook this task. Generally, the Council and Council planning staff showed themselves to be enthusiastic advocates of increased residential densities, despite resident resistance, on the misguided premise that this would represent municipal progress.
After a series of exhausting public consultation meetings, conducted by the City of Moreland, where the overwhelming sentiment of residents was that increases in residential densities should be kept to a minimum, particularly in the ‘low density’ Neighbourhood Residential Zone, the Moreland Council lodged a rezoning proposal with the Rezoning Advisory Panel of the then Minister for Planning, Matthew Guy.

The proposal that was lodged was a significant compromise, which many residents considered unsatisfactory in so far as it allowed for residential density increases in excess of that considered compatible with the preservation of valued neighbourhood character. Nevertheless, key aspects of the Moreland Council proposal, which rendered this compromise acceptable in some degree to some residents, were the inclusion of minimum lot sizes for new dwellings and minimum private open space requirements in the Neighbourhood Residential Zones (the proposal formulated two variants of this zone – one for the North and one for the South of the municipality). These provisions would have facilitated a significant increase in housing stock within the ‘low-density’ Neighbourhood Residential Zones, while still preserving a semblance of neighbourhood character. In most cases, these provisions would allow single detached dwellings on a single lot to be replaced with two, and in some cases three dwellings.
As the Moreland Council proposal had not been accepted by the Napthine Government before it lost office in late 2014, the proposal subsequently came before the newly elected Andrews Labor government and Planning Minister, Richard Wynne.

Wynne accepted the Moreland Council proposal, but only after the minimum lot size and minimum open space requirements had been removed from the proposal. Therefore, what was already a tenuous compromise between the aspirations of the majority of residents and the pro-density predisposition of the Moreland Council proposal was substantially undermined.

Wynne’s removal of these provisions has effectively gutted the hard won compromise reached between Moreland residents and the Council by mid 2014.
A number of issues are raised about the Minister’s bastardisation of the Moreland residential rezoning proposal.

1. The removal of minimum lot size and minimum private open space provisions of the 2014 compromise rezoning proposal has essentially removed any meaningful protective measures against the type of residential density increases that the majority of residents see as an attack on their areas' liveability. Unwanted development will continue unabated, perhaps now even accelerated. It is simply insulting that Council now describes the Labor Minister’s prescription of 4 dwellings per lot (regardless of lot size) as a formula for ‘minimal’ change. Under these conditions, even in the lowest-density zone, the change will be drastic and destructive of the neighbourhood character that most residents seek to preserve. Such language is bureaucratic manipulation at its worst – again, taking the public for fools.

2. In Opposition, Labor Party figures at times aligned themselves with resident protests against proposed Coalition density increases. That a Labor Government should subsequently impose a rezoning outcome worse than many residents would have expected from the Coalition will almost certainly breed cynicism towards Labor in Moreland at a time when Labor should be presenting itself a Party of meaningful alternatives. This is a missed opportunity. One Victorian Labor parliamentarian was silly enough to add insult to injury to assert to a meeting of informed residents that Labor had saved them from the residential density excesses they would have suffered under a Coalition government.

3. Victorian Labor now represents a greater threat to suburban amenity in terms of density and over development than the Coalition had been. Residents may now begin mobilising against Labor in the same way they did against the previous Coalition Government. Labor party members and supporters will be amongst those mobilising against the Labor government on this issue.

4. Victorian Labor appears to have learned nothing from residents' fierce opposition to the proposed residential density increases under the Coalition government. Labor has just picked up from where the previous unpopular Labor minister, Justin Madden, had left off, as if there were no history in between. The take away message from Richard Wynne's treatment of the residential density issue in Moreland is that the Labor government offers no alternative to the Coalition and has no regard for the struggle of Moreland residents against the contempt of the Coalition government on this issue.

5. The negative impacts of rapid population growth on urban amenity, and growing metropolitan dysfunction, played a significant part in the downfall of the Brumby Labor Government in 2010. Given this, it is extraordinary that the current Labor Government had demonstrated a willingness to ignore the aspirations of residents in a way that will almost certainly reduce its chances of winning the seat of Brunswick at the next Victorian election. Some of the most fierce opposition to increased residential densities was from West Brunswick.

What is Minister Wynne’s attack on suburban amenity in Moreland likely to yield in terms of the built environment? Established separate detached dwellings in Moreland are now dropping like flies as small scale, medium-density developers run riot, reaping the windfall benefits of reckless policy. The photo below provides an example of what is likely to become the norm. This site is just under 570 square meters, which until recently had a modest single detached dwelling on it, with a small yard and garden. Whereas under the Moreland City Council’s original rezoning proposal, this site would likely have been allowed only a single double-storey dwelling, in keeping with Richard Wynne’s bastardisation of the Moreland rezoning proposal, permission has been granted for three double-story townhouses.

Despite the Minister’s fatuous claim that Labor’s rezoning provisions in Moreland will protect valued neighbourhood character against over development, Labor has now ensured the continued destruction of the neighbourhood amenity that the majority of residents wish to protect. Political sophistry at its worst. It is little wonder that many Australians rank politicians with used car salesmen.

Even given the irresponsible levels of population and household growth expected under current immigration settings, in all likelihood, the estimated increase in dwellings required for Moreland would have been achievable under Moreland’s original proposal to the Coalition government in 2014. Wynne’s decision seems to be pure ideology: increased residential density is ‘good’; low-density is ‘bad’.

It is not surprising that Wynne was a senior advisor to former Labor Deputy Prime Minister, Brian Howe, in the early 1990s. Howe was a zealous advocate of ‘urban villages’, the antithesis of low-density, garden suburbia. To ‘urban village’ ideologues, including those on the Moreland Council, resident wishes are an obstacle to be overcome, not something to be respected. Labor, it seems, is quickly digging itself into a political hole again on urban policy.

This article contains a speech by Kelvin Thomson, critical of a motion to change environmental law by George Christensen, Member for Dawson, Queensland. Monday, 8 February 2016, House of Representatives, Chamber Speech, page 22 Hansard proofs.

KELVIN THOMSON I do not support this motion by the member for Dawson. The environmental law is there to protect the environment and to protect endangered species. The member for Dawson's own party brought it in. All environmental groups ask is that mining companies, agribusiness and so on do not break the law, just as environment groups and ordinary citizens are expected to abide by the law.
If companies abide by the law, there is no issue. All the provisions that the member for Dawson complains about do is give people a right to take action if the environment law is not being complied with. The implication in the member for Dawson's motion is that mining and other companies should not have to comply with the environmental law—that they should be able to break it with impunity.

The member for Dawson may not care about the black throated finch, but I do. It is a beautiful little bird. We should not push it to the edge of extinction in our quest for ever-increasing material wealth. Mining booms come and go but black throated finches do not. If the black throated finch becomes extinct, there is no way to bring it back. We have the EPBC Act precisely because we have learnt from the mistakes of the past and we should support it and strengthen it, not undermine and white-ant it.

Since being passed by the Howard government 16 years ago the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act has been the overriding national environmental protection law, including throughout the mining boom, and environment groups are required to operate within this law. Since the act commenced in the year 2000 there have been approximately 5,500 projects referred to the minister under the environmental impact assessment provisions. Of those projects around 1,500 have been assessed as requiring formal assessment and approval.

Around 33 actions have been commenced in the Federal Court by third parties in relation to the EPBC Act's environmental impact assessment process. The proceedings taken by third parties have related to only 22 projects that had been referred under the environmental impact assessment process, so this means that third-party appeals to the Federal Court affected only 0.4 of one per cent of all projects referred under the legislation.

Environmental advocacy is in the public interest. Environmental advocacy enhances environmental decision making and accountability and drives policy reform to protect the environment. The Australia Institute conducted national polling and found that 68 per cent of Australians support environmental advocacy. While 27 per cent said environmental groups had too much influence in public debates, 34 per cent said they had not enough influence.
By contrast, most people—62 per cent—said big business and 58 per cent said mining companies had too much influence.
While six in 10 Australians are concerned that big business and mining companies have too much influence, the coalition enthusiastically promotes them and even encourages them to become political activists and fight government policy. In the last five years the mining industry has spent $340 million on lobby groups and more on registered lobbyists and in-house lobbyists. The government is arguing to silence environmental activists while on the other hand it wants industry lobbyists to become activists—the irony, the double standard!

Section 487 was designed to address issues of standing, a legal term that broadly means an individual's or group's right to challenge an approval on the basis that they are either affected by it or have a special interest in the outcome. It does not provide for open standing, whereby anyone can bring an action for review, but it does authorise representative standing in which groups can act on behalf of an affected community. This is a crucial component of a national environmental act that seeks to promote rigorous and effective environmental review for approvals that, potentially, affect matters of national environmental significance, such as the development of Queensland's Galilee Basin coal deposits.

Removing section 487 will stop environmental groups from acting on behalf of affected communities and performing their important function as a watchdog. As The Australia Institute has highlighted, advocacy is essential for a well-functioning democracy, providing for those most affected by government decisions to be involved in policy formation, helping keep government accountable to the wider community and counterbalancing the influence of corporate organisations over government decision making.

Robust environmental review by focused, engaged, representative organisations, like the Mackay Conservation Group and the Australian Conservation Foundation, has never been more important. Rolling back the legal provisions that allow this to happen would be a backward step.

Australian comedian Barry Humphries' humour identified and targeted a world of pleasant streets and gardens that is now under threat. We've stopped laughing, but is it too late?

I was raised on the humour of Australian comedian, Barry Humphries, when his main alter ego was the suburban sage simply known as "Mrs Edna Everage” and his eastern suburbs commentary issued forth in the monotonous narrow viewed but well-meaning drone of Mr. Sandy Stone. Barry’s characters described a world which was very familiar to me, although I lived in neither the now famous Moonee Ponds nor in the apparent epitome of Melbourne mediocrity, Glen Iris. The adults in my family all found the Humphries humour hilarious, despite, or maybe because of the fact that their lives were being held up to good humoured ridicule. I shared this delight and amusement with them.

Barry Humphries' targets were mediocre, commonplace and rather petty preoccupations such as lawn mowing, sandwich making, wall colour, general domestic decor and associated status symbols. It was all so familiar and we laughed our heads off all the more, delighted to be laughing at ourselves and our nearest and dearest. Or if it wasn’t us it was someone we knew. The humour rested on an assumption of self- satisfied comfort and safety, devoid of outside threat. Our laughter and Barry’s merciless assault is an indication of how quickly we forget and how short each stage of our lives really is. Barry was born in 1934, safely clear of any expectation of participation in WW2 or The Vietnam War. He emerged as an adult in the postwar comfort and optimism of the 1950s and played to an audience where young couples were settling into their suburban Shangri -la’s. "The Australian dream” of the house and garden was alive and well and not under any threat. This situation continued for a few more decades but on a downward trajectory in terms of general accessibility, that is to say, affordability.

Fast forward to the present day and what was once a source of relaxation, pleasure, security and comedy, the suburban family home, is now turning into a tragedy.

The undermining of the family home and garden in concept and reality has been under way for at least 30 years. It began with soft rumbles, the odd newspaper opinion piece advocating the end of the 1/4 acre block and the beginning of a rhetoric very negative and critical of the way we lived. People started to parrot these opinion pieces and preach knowingly at dinner parties, that we couldn’t go on living as we were as though cleverly seeing into the future. Then they would go home and continue living as they were, no doubt thinking that it was people in the future who would have to live differently, not they. The point was that they did not express any feeling of being under threat. Yet they were. They are!

The sacred, yet hilarious homes of our parents and of us are now being demolished, at a frightening rate. The honest workmanship of the Californian Bungalo and the 50s triple fronted cream brick veneers is being replaced with nondescript non- architectural multi dwelling, fence to fence arrangements , devoid of of any reference to the humanity of those who are expected to dwell within. The subject of Barry’s whole comedy career is being pulled down in front of us; a new cavernous car park excavation appearing near where I live each week. That is the reality on the ground. In the media , a past Victorian Planning Minister, Justin Madden who now works for developers was given space for a whole article about the need and desirability, nay imperative, of demolishing 60 year old houses in a ring of Melbourne suburbs about 15 kms from the CBD. There’s always a new angle in the scramble to fit ever more residents into Melbourne (which grows by about 80,000 people p.a.) Developers who can get their hands on these unsuspecting little houses on their “1/4 acre" blocks (I understand they never were as large as 1/4 acre, really) can make a killing by demolishing and redeveloping to fit in more residences.

It seems to me that people are now really getting upset by all this. They see their local neighbourhoods in a constant state of transformation. They are living perpetually in a construction zone. Trees, houses and gardens go, roadworks and construction abound and there is the constant shock of empty blocks of land either totally cleared and levelled or exposing raw bedrock 3 metres deep, previously covered with a few tonnes of earth and rocks and iced with pleasant house and garden.

But what has this to do with Barry Humphries? Well for a start, the much derided but rather enviable and almost egalitarian Melbourne suburban way of life is swirling down the plug hole and will be gone before you know it. The people of Melbourne did very little to protect it when it was first under fire and now it is probably too late. Were we asleep at the wheel? Did Barry Humphries unwittingly lull us into a child-like sense of security about our home city?

What does Barry say now when, in actual fact what is happening is that our precious gardens are being used to accommodate an ever higher population? Had we been asked 15 or 20 years ago if we minded someone building in our backyard, we would have said, “go and find you own land!” but that is what we are being forced to do now. People move out of garden-surrounded houses into units with token amounts of land and end up with only a little bit of change from the exchange. Collectively, what is happening is that others are building in our gardens!

Barry Humphries’ jokes about the scourge of thrip on the roses (or was it the tomatoes?) will be incomprehensible to future Melbournians. How can this joke be funny when the “problem” is foreign to you?

The hour long video inside gives excellent analysis of what is wrong with the TPP. Basically it is an attempt to bring about an overarching corporate world government that will invalidate national and state laws wherever they disagree with it. But with this government there are no voters, there are no citizens, there is no recourse. What can you do about this? Contact your local MP and ask they what they intend to do to stop the TPP? Are they going to vote against it? Let us know their response. You can read the full text of the TPP here, thanks to the New Zealand Government: http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-full-text-of-the-trans-pacific-partnership-tpp/

With the details of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) no longer secret, journalist Thom Hartmann discusses what’s in the trade deal with Public Citizen's Melinda St. Louis, radio host and author Ari Rabin-Havt, and the U.S. Business and Industry Council’s Kevin Kearns.

Genetically Modified Food labeling would be outlawed

"Democratic Congressman Peter DeFazio denounced a provision discretely hidden in pending trade legislation that would allow governments or corporations to sue countries or states over laws that mandate the labelling of genetically modified foods.

If approved by Congress, the legislation called Trade Promotion Authority, also known as “fast track,” would not allow Congress to amend or filibuster free trade agreements negotiated by the president and would require and up or down vote within 90 days. (Source: This content was originally published by teleSUR at the following address:
"http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/US-Lawmaker-Slams-Monsanto-Provision-in-Fast-Track-Bill-for-TPP-20150429-0030.html". If you intend to use it, please cite the source and provide a link to the original article. www.teleSURtv.net/english.)

The TPP and International Corporate Control

"As the devastating conclusions of these and other researchers awaken people globally to the dangers of Roundup and GMO foods, transnational corporations are working feverishly with the Obama administration to fast-track the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade agreement that would strip governments of the power to regulate transnational corporate activities. Negotiations have been kept secret from Congress but not from corporate advisors, 600 of whom have been consulted and know the details. According to Barbara Chicherio in Nation of Change:

The Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) has the potential to become the biggest regional Free Trade Agreement in history. . . .

The chief agricultural negotiator for the US is the former Monsanto lobbyist, Islam Siddique.  If ratified the TPP would impose punishing regulations that give multinational corporations unprecedented right to demand taxpayer compensation for policies that corporations deem a barrier to their profits.

. . . They are carefully crafting the TPP to insure that citizens of the involved countries have no control over food safety, what they will be eating, where it is grown, the conditions under which food is grown and the use of herbicides and pesticides.

Food safety is only one of many rights and protections liable to fall to this super-weapon of international corporate control. In an April 2013 interview on The Real News Network, Kevin Zeese called the TPP “NAFTA on steroids” and “a global corporate coup.” He warned:

No matter what issue you care about—whether its wages, jobs, protecting the environment . . . this issue is going to adversely affect it . . . .

If a country takes a step to try to regulate the financial industry or set up a public bank to represent the public interest, it can be sued . . . .

(Source: http://ellenbrown.com/2013/11/26/monsanto-the-tpp-and-global-food-dominance/"

The Trans-Pacific Partnership Would Undermine Internet Freedom

"Remember SOPA - the "copyright" legislation before Congress last year that public outcry stopped cold? Well, the same corporations behind SOPA have pushed to insert its most pernicious provisions into TPP. Says who? The organizations that stopped SOPA like the Electronic Freedom Foundation and the ACLU.

Under this TPP proposal, Internet Service Providers could be required to "police" user activity (i.e. police YOU), take down internet content, and cut people off from internet access for common user-generated content.

Violations could be as simple as the creation of a YouTube video with clips from other videos, even if for personal or educational purposes.

Mandatory fines would be imposed for individuals' non-commercial copies of copyrighted material. So, downloading some music could be treated the same as large-scale, for-profit copyright violations.

Innovation would be stifled as the creation and sharing of user-generated content would face new barriers, and as monopoly copyrights would be extended. The TPP proposes to impose copyright protections for a minimum of 120 years for corporate-created content.

Breaking digital locks for legit purposes, such as using Linux, could subject users to mandatory fines. Blind and deaf people also would be harmed by this overreach, as digital locks can block access to audio-supported content and closed captioning." (Sourc: http://www.exposethetpp.org/TPPImpacts_InternetFreedom.html)"

From the Waking Times[1]

"

Today, the website of New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade released the massive, full text of the ostensibly secretive Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).

At the bottom there is a link to a zip file containing all chapters or one can read and save each chapter PDF individually. The lengthy text contains a lot of business newspeak. However, various chapters deal with history’s biggest free trade move yet, pharmaceutical industries, business conduct in third-world and developing countries, agriculture, state-owned enterprises and designated monopolies (interesting terminology), government procurement, competition policies, and e-commerce.

In October, WikiLeaks claimed that they had a leaked copy of the full text and it contained information on trade secrets and top-down control of the Internet that are indeed found in chapter 18.

It is referred to as the “Agreement,” although most of the world’s people have never had any say at all in the decisions foisted on them below.

NOTES

[1] Waking Times http://www.wakingtimes.com/2015/11/06/full-text-of-trans-pacific-partnership-finally-released/"

Video inside: The Kennett era in Victoria represented a neoliberal makeover of government, state and local. Swept to power during a global property collapse in 1992, the Liberal premier imposed radical and rapid transformation without electoral platform or forewarning. It was a classic case of the international phenomenon documented by Naomi Klein in Shock Doctrine. This talk focuses on the transformation of the core municipality of greater Melbourne – the Melbourne City Council in its historic context. It was disempowered and its citizens disenfranchised between 1992-9 to give the Growth Machine of property interests and state government free rein. That Machine emerged from the mid 1970s, being reinforced under the previous Labor government, 1982-92, as the manufacturing sector was phased out federally; cranes on the skyline was Premier Cain’s catchcry. Kennett capitalized on a political and institutional tradition in which property interests (entrenched in the Victorian Legislative Council) dominated from inception. Other Australian colonies were founded by government rather than land seekers.

This speech was given at the SPAVICTAS AGM at Ross House on 5 September 2015. The speech is based on Dr Munro's PhD, downloadable from http://www.canberra.edu.au/researchrepository/items/daa21f8b-4758-410c-954a-a6409d3fdaca/1/ as .pdf of 3.44MB. Dr Munro mentions, as a contrast to Kennett's notion of 'commonsense', Thomas Payne's book, "Commonsense", which was banned in Britain and became immensely popular. (Download a free copy here.)

Video inside: This article is the text of a speech by Sheila Newman about how Kennett Government policies pushed up population growth in Victoria and Australia. Whilst many people remained for a long time under the impression that immigration numbers were a Federal domain, he began the practise of using regional migration definitions to attract people to urban Melbourne. He also de-toothed Victorian industrial law, affecting wages, condition and enforcement. The new interpretation of regional migration was adapted by other States and territories. Kennett's attack on Victorian industrial laws would ultimately pave the way for Workchoices and a much less effective system for ensuring that imported workers were not paid less than Australians, creating a new pull-factor in Australia.

Regional migration under Kennett

This is the text of a speech given to SPAVICTAS AGM 2015.

Way under the radar of the general public, the Kennett Government (1992-1999) began a practice of using the rural category of ‘region in need of migration’ to reclassify Melbourne itself.
Melbourne was thus reclassified a regional migration area by the Kennett Government in 1998, which meant it became a destination for people who traditionally migrated to country regions under softer entry rules. [1]

Regional migration categories permitted easier entry for immigrants. Rural employers could sponsor workers for positions they claimed they were unable to fill, with fewer tests than urban employers and immigrants coming in under classical federal schemes. They could also sponsor a wider range of family reunion, such as nephews, to work in family businesses. [2]
The trend that Kennett started was imitated by the other States. Over time all the other states also declared their CBDs in need of immigration under regional migration rules. This was the time of the rise of the internet. Before this time, immigration had been a long drawn out process that was hard for individuals to initiate or get approval for. Now Australian States started up state Immigration websites advertising state and private sponsorship of immigrant workers and their families. Currently, these include:

In Victoria, liveinvictoria.gov.com.au; Note that the Victorian government has just changed the name of their liveinvictoria.gov.au website to https://liveinmelbourne.vic.gov.au/. Probable reason is that they know people are onto the old site.
in WA www.migration.wa.gov.au;
South Australia, migration.sa.gov.au;
in Queensland, migration.qld.gov.au;
ACT, canberrayourfuture.com.au;
Northern Territory, australiasnorthernterritory.com.au; Tasmania, migration.tas.gov.au

Kennet was congratulated by people in favour of high Migration for having increased migration to the regions and reversed the long-term trend of migration out of Victoria, much of it to Queensland.

This perception was criticised because the so-called ‘regional migrants’ mostly ended up in urban Melbourne. [3]

Nonetheless, I would make the following case that these migration policies and several of Jeff Kennett’s other policies were a major factor in creating conditions which would set Australian on a terrible path to rapid and uncontrolled mass migration.

Kennet’s changes to industrial law made it easier to import cheap labour

Before the Kennett government, most Victorian wage earners worked under state awards which prescribed minimum conditions and wages, including holidays, benefits and penalties for an extensive range of employment roles. Any employee could look these up or have them explained easily by the Victorian Industrial Relations Commission, through a hotline called Wageline – where I worked. But in 1993, the Kennett Government abolished the Victorian Industrial Relations Act, replacing it with the weaker and harder to enforce, and poorly staffed, Employee Relations Act. [4]

Other Australian states imitated this initiative.

Unions scrambled to cover employees by registering new awards under Federal law, under s.51(xxxv) of the Australian constitution. These awards, however, had to be negotiated between individual organisations and their employees. Their enforcement was very limited under the Federal constitution. They were mostly inaccessible and incomprehensible for individual employees.

This right-wing revolution in Victorian industrial law under Kennett in 1993 set the scene for Workchoices under the John Howard government, (11 March 1996 to 3 December 2007). The Howard Government, entering this weakened industrial law and industrial relations situation, went on to widen the use of the corporations clause in the Australian constitution, which exempted corporations from many employer obligations. [5]

Up until now Australian employers had not had much to gain by importing immigrant workers because they had been required to employ them under the same industrial awards as native born workers. That meant that there was not the same opportunity to import cheap labour as there was, notoriously, in the United States.

Today we are in a situation where the Australian labour market has been greatly deregulated and it is now possible to employ overseas immigrants according to individually tailored employment contracts where they have little or no bargaining power or recourse for legal protection.

Coupled with the deregulation of immigration, this has created local pull factors which the Australian growth lobby has been keen both to lobby for and to exploit.

Deregulation of housing market and Rise of the Internet as factors

Two further processes have helped to expand the trends that Jeff Kennett’s actions set in motion. These further processes were:

- Deregulation of the Australian housing market to permit overseas purchase and investment
- The rise of the internet, which was exploited by state governments, private migration agents in conjunction with employers; universities seeking students; and property financiers, conveyancers, developers and real-estate agencies, to globalise Australian employment, public institutions, universities, and property.

Steve Bracks and John Brumby would continue Kennett’s big population campaign, despite the different brand presentations of their politics.

Was Kennett aware of his contribution to setting in motion Australia’s unfortunate population tsunami? He was a great population growth spruiker and had served formally as Minister for Housing, Immigration and Ethnic Affairs in 1981 under the Hamer government. He has made many public declarations on his perception that very high immigration is desirable.

In The Age in March 1998, the following businessmen and politician argued that population growth was desirable and inevitable: Tony Berg, then Chief Executive Officer of Boral Industries (building materials and components) and still, in 2001, director of numerous banking, insurance and property trust related groups and holdings, and the Midland Brick Company; Jeff Kennett, populationnist Premier of Victoria (who presided over a developmentalist Ministry for Planning and Infrastructure which decreased housing lot sizes under a code and administration largely unresponsive to public outrage), and Phil Ruthven, who again claimed that by the end of the 21st century Australia's population would be 150 million.

An article in Civil Engineers Australia – December 1998, entitled, “Big Population Growth Needed, Forum Told – enVision ’98 Conference", reported speakers for high immigration and a big population. Among them were Tony Berg, Jeff Kennett, Alan Stockdale, Treasurer of the Kennett Victorian Liberal Government, Dr Jack Wynhoven, chairman of the enVision 98 organising committee and chief executive officer of Connell Wagner (Engineering and major infrastructure projects) and John White, chief executive officer of Richard Pratt's Visy [Paper and Packaging but also manufacturers of Visy board, a building material] Industries. (Pratt was Vice President of the Victorian Chamber of Manufactures and has extensive involvement in business.)

The theme of needing a big population in order to repel invaders remains popular. In "More Migrants, Pleads Kennett", by Christine Jackman in the Melbourne Herald Sun, 12/2/1999, Victorian Premier, Jeff Kennett was quoted telling "a New York business lunch" that "Australia's population was so low it would not even be able to defend Tasmania", attacking immigration levels as "almost negligible".... and underestimating them at "about 60,000 a year." (Source of quote is Sheila Newman, The Growth Lobby and its Absence, Chapter 6, http://tinyurl.com/p4ykwup)

The following graphs show interstate migration trends over the period discussed

NOTES

[1] State Government spokesman, Jeremi Moule, 2003, cited in Catherine Best, “Culture shock strikes region,” The Courier, Fairfax regional media, December 12, 2003, http://www.thecourier.com.au/story/577142/culture-shock-strikes-region/

[2] “Persons sponsored by relatives in the SDAS visa subclasses currently receive concessions in two ways: no points test to pass and a lower English language threshold criterion. More than half of those visaed are being sponsored by relatives living in Melbourne. Given that the underlying reason for providing points concessions is to attract persons to locations where the Government is anxious to promote settlement (notably regional locations) there does not seem to be any rationale for Melbourne to continue as a designated area in the SDAS visa subclass.” Evaluation of the General Skilled Migration Categories, Dept of Immigration, March 2006, by Bob Birrell et al, “Evaluation of the General Skilled Migration Categories,” Dept of Immigration, March 2006, p.178. http://www.flinders.edu.au/sabs/nils-files/reports/GSM_2006_Full_report.pdf

The Skilled Regional (489) visa is a provisional skilled migration visa that can provide a pathway to permanent residence. The visa is administered by the Commonwealth Government’s Department of Immigration and Border Protection (DIBP). Prior to applying for this visa you must be nominated by a state or territory government, or sponsored by an eligible relative living in Australia.
The Victorian Government offers state nomination under the Skilled Regional (489) visa for highly skilled and eligible professionals and tradespeople who want to work in regional Victoria. Source: . [Last accessed on 27 September 2015]. More general visas on that page : http://www.liveinvictoria.vic.gov.au/visas-and-immigrating/state-nomination#.Vd_lAys_i1Q .

[3] John O'Leary, “The Resurgence of marvellous Melbourne - trends in Population distribution in Victoria, 1991-1996,” People and Place, Vol.7,no.1 and Catherine Best, “Culture shock strikes region,” The Courier, Fairfax regional media, December 12, 2003, http://www.thecourier.com.au/story/577142/culture-shock-strikes-region/)

[4] My reference is personal experience in the Victorian Department of Labor at the time, and, Richard Tracey, “Standing Fast, Federal Regulation of Industrial Relations in Victoria,” H.R. Nicholls Society, http://archive.hrnicholls.com.au/archives/vol14/vol14-3.php]

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WorkChoices: “Relying on the corporations power of Section 51(xx) of the Constitution, the Howard Government extended the coverage of the federal industrial relations system to an estimated 85% of Australian employees. All employees of "constitutional corporations" (i.e. trading, financial, and foreign corporations) became covered by the WorkChoices system. Other constitutional powers used by the Federal Government to extend the scope of the legislation included the territories power to cover the Australian territories, including the external territories of the Christmas and Cocos Islands, the external affairs power, the interstate and overseas trade and commerce power, and the powers of the Commonwealth to legislate for its own employees. Victoria voluntarily had referred its industrial relations powers to the Commonwealth in 1996, under Section 51(xxxvii) of the Constitution.”

[6] The Age, 16 March, 1999, "Kennett calls for big rise in migrant intake", Cited in Sheila Newman, The Growth Lobby and its Absence, Chapter 6, http://researchbank.swinburne.edu.au/vital/access/manager/Repository/swin:7395 (with appendices) or (without appendices) http://tinyurl.com/p4ykwup

[7] Miles Lewis, Suburban Backlash, Bloomings Books, Victoria, Australia, 1999, p.viii. Cited in Sheila Newman, The Growth Lobby and its Absence, Chapter 6, http://researchbank.swinburne.edu.au/vital/access/manager/Repository/swin:7395 (with appendices) or (without appendices) http://tinyurl.com/p4ykwup Cited in Sheila Newman, The Growth Lobby and its Absence, Chapter 6, http://researchbank.swinburne.edu.au/vital/access/manager/Repository/swin:7395 (with appendices) or (without appendices) http://tinyurl.com/p4ykwup

[8] “Trevor Sykes, The Bold Riders, Allen and Unwin, St. Leonards, New South Wales, Second Edition, 1996, (Year 2000 reprint), p.337 mentions that Pratt controlled Regal Insurance and Occidental Insurance in the late 1980s and was one of the funders of a shelf company called Bacharach Pty Ltd, which corporate cowboy, Abe Goldberg, used to purchase Brick and Pipe Industries, which he believed to be an unrealised land bank. Additional information about business interests was obtained from the Business Who's Who of Australia, Dun and Bradstreet Marketing P/L, 35th Edition, 2001.” Cited in Sheila Newman, The Growth Lobby and its Absence, Chapter 6, http://researchbank.swinburne.edu.au/vital/access/manager/Repository/swin:7395 (with appendices) or (without appendices) http://tinyurl.com/p4ykwup

[9] Christine Jackman, "More Migrants, Pleads Kennett", Melbourne Herald Sun, 12/2/1999, p.16.

UPDATE 29 September 2015, Click here for video of speech.SPAVicTas AGM, 5 September 2015, Ross House, 247 Flinders Lane, 4th Floor Conference Room: 1.45 for 2pm. Speaker: Dr Angela Munro, Public Policy expert: "Kennett's 'commonsense revolution' and the Melbourne 'growth machine'. "The unilateral substitution of an appointed commission for the elected Melbourne City Council in October, 1993 by the incoming, neoliberal Victorian Government, was followed by its disempowerment as a democratic institution before reinstatement in emasculated form in 1996. The resounding defeat of the Labor government, in 1992, coincided with an unprecedented global property collapse whose cataclysmic economic and political consequences in Melbourne were conducive to this marginalisation of the City Council and citizenry. A historic dual conflict over the governance and development of central Melbourne between the Victorian Government and the City Council on the one hand, and between central city property interests and citizenry on the other, was immediately resolved. Whereas efficiencies justified council amalgamations statewide, the Melbourne City Council was subject to separate and extreme centralisation of state government power, deregulation of urban planning and de-democratisation as a micro CBD council."

Sustainable Population Australia,
Victorian and Tasmanian branch
Annual General Meeting 2015
On - Saturday September 5th
At - 1.45 for 2.00pm. (if you arrive late and the front door is closed – ring 0405 825769 or 0409742927)
Venue: Ross House, 247 Flinders Lane, Melbourne 3000 Hayden Raysmith Conference Room, Fourth Floor. – (Turn left from the stairwell; or from lift through fire door and then left. It is the corner room).

Guest Speaker : Dr. Angela Munro, Public Policy expert:

"Kennett's 'commonsense revolution' and the Melbourne 'growth machine"

"The unilateral substitution of an appointed commission for the elected Melbourne City Council in October, 1993 by the incoming, neoliberal Victorian Government, was followed by its disempowerment as a democratic institution before reinstatement in emasculated form in 1996. The resounding defeat of the Labor government, in 1992, coincided with an unprecedented global property collapse whose cataclysmic economic and political consequences in Melbourne were conducive to this marginalisation of the City Council and citizenry. A historic dual conflict over the governance and development of central Melbourne between the Victorian Government and the City Council on the one hand, and between central city property interests and citizenry on the other, was immediately resolved. Whereas efficiencies justified council amalgamations statewide, the Melbourne City Council was subject to separate and extreme centralisation of state government power, deregulation of urban planning and de-democratisation as a micro CBD council."

Sheila Newman (Masters by Research in Environmental Sociology, specialising in population and environment), writer and researcher, current president of the SPA VicTas branch whose own research is complementary will add population specific details to fill in the jig saw of the picture of the population pressures we are experiencing in Victoria: "Victoria's population numbers under Kennett."

(Video inside.) Once again Nick Folkes and his Party for Freedom have come up with a very effective way to protest against foreign ownership and overpopulation through invited economic immigration and its impacts.[1] Other groups would do well to imitate these democratic initiatives especially if they differ with Party for Freedom on issues of multiculturalism but care about housing affordability and democracy, rather than simply trying to shut Party for Freedom up and, in the process, allow the growth lobby to destroy Australia. In this video Folkes and his Party continue their campaign to make real estate agents and property developers think twice about selling built property to foreign nationals. They focus on the preponderance of Chinese foreign nationals purchasing Australian property. This cannot help but get attention since the Australian mainstream media constantly popularises this issue, although it does not promote any effective way of countering it. (Note that Fairfax and Murdoch press are heavily invested in property dot coms that market Australian real estate to the world: www.realestate.com and www.domain.com). In the video inside this article Mr Folkes engages effectively with people who show both positive and negative interest in the protest for which he is a spokesperson. What next, Mr Folkes, a protest at an Australian international airport, or on the road towards it?

Party for Freedom's press release with this video

"On Saturday, 29th August 2015, Party for Freedom members and supporters will be carrying out protests at auction sites objecting to foreign nationals purchasing Australian residential property.

Last Saturday, 15th August we held protests or flash mobs at three auction sites. The response was amazing with real estate agents and onlookers totally shocked seeing patriotic Australian arrive with placards and Australian flags reminding both real estate agents and foreign buyers that it is illegal under Australian law to sell existing property to foreign nationals.

Thousands of properties have been illegally sold to foreign nationals yet our government does nothing to stop the buy out. It is economic genocide to transfer assets and wealth to foreign nationals. Also, the impact on housing prices and rentals is huge with Australian property prices being some of the most expensive real estate in the world due to foreign ownership coupled with mass immigration.

Both NSW and Victorian state governments are addicted to stamp duty and will continue to encourage foreign ownership. Last year alone, the slippery NSW Treasury raked in over $7.4 billion in stamp duty. No doubt much of this stamp duty money is ‘dirty money’ from China. The CCP Politburo is on an anti-corruption drive in China so many Chinese nationals with connections to the ‘Chinese Communist Party’ are keen to get their money out of China. China has rules in place restricting the export of undeclared money yet does very little to stop the outflows to Australia and other Western and Asian nations."

The press release also claims, without supplying documentation for the statement, that,

"The Chinese government wants to establish ‘Chinese satellites’ throughout the world giving it control and prestige in many nations. The Chinese government has secret plans to move millions of Chinese nationals out of China to help establish these new colonies.

The press release continues:

The people of Hong Kong have seen their small city-state overrun with mainlanders, this has pushed up property prices and demolished wages and job opportunities. Australia should take notice what is happening around the world and take action but we know that our government is too busy getting intoxicated on lure of easy money."

"It is now up to the people of our nation to take action, and this is exactly what we did last Saturday when we arrived unannounced at three auction sites. The first auction site we arrived at was Chatswood. The real estate agent and prospective buyers weren’t happy seeing us arrive when we reminding them that we do not want to see our nation sold out. Our action caused the auction to be cancelled. Our intention is not to stop or interrupt auctions but to exercise our democratic right of protest and remind all present that it is illegal to sell existing property to foreign nationals. We have a right to be angry and annoyed at seeing foreign nationals steal our economic sovereignty.

The second auction site was Turramurra. Again, the real estate agent and onlookers were totally shocked with some rowdy neighbours calling us “racists’ and “bogans”. There were even more neighbours who quietly gave us support and openly spoke about their own opposition to Labor and Liberal’s foreign sell out. These good people hold the same reservations as we do when it comes to our pimpish real estate industry and government who are more than eager in flogging off our nation to foreign entities."

NOTE

[1] Despite my admiration for the effective democratic protest these Australians are making in defense of housing affordability and Australian sovereignty, Party for Freedom's previous website featured some articles and comments about aboriginals and muslims with which candobetter.net does not agree and with which I cannot agree on anthropological grounds personally, speaking as a sociologist specialising in population, inheritance laws and land-use planning. Furthermore, I think that these comments are antithetical to the Party for Freedom's arguments for sovereignty - which is actually best achieved with a fair dose of endogamy. Here is my reasoning:

These comments and articles use 'scientific' theory against specific groups of peoples. For instance, one article discusses a high rate of cousin marriage in a particular people as if it were unusual or hazardous incest. That is a popular view that does not take into account the widespread role of endogamy in preserving land within a people, and other factors that need to be taken into account when assessing cousin marriage. In fact, a high rate of endogamy need not be genetically damaging; it can be beneficial, both in terms of preserving control over territory and in strengthening positive traits. Depending on the public relations, where one highly endogamous group can be stigmatised for 'inbreeding stupidity' another may be famous for 'inbreeding genius'. When assessing the impact of marriage and land-tenure traditions on genetic inheritance, environment and changes to economy, diet, and social organisation also need to be taken into account. See http://candobetter.net/node/3197 about the importance of dynasties in modern power. There is also a comment on the Party for Freedom site suggesting that a particular group of people have lower average I.Q.s that other people. IQ tests are not reliable when dealing with culture and language differences and this theory also does not take into account mass dispossession and changes to economy, diet and social organisation - and the impact of drugs and alcohol. It's a pity that the Party for Freedom does not seem to be able to see how fighting between groups weakens the ability of Australians to stand up to the powers that have overtaken national control of land, housing and economic benefits.

Despite these reservations, I do not want to fall into the trap of enabling wedge politics, which makes people afraid to learn from positive efforts by other groups on the grounds that those groups also hold opinions of which they disapprove. If I were to engage in wedge politics, I would not publish the Party for Freedom's video, on grounds of my differences with their opinions about issues from endogamous marriages - which are, ironically, also widely held by the general political, scientific and citizen community.

This short article around a letter from Bob Couch, records how the ABC spontaneously contacted a candidate for an alternative political party to tell him that the ABC would not give him any time to talk about his policies. The candidate had not approached the ABC, they approached him. Candobetter.net has run a few articles about how the ABC excludes candidates outside the major parties and we are running this story because the issue is so important. The ABC should be informing Australians of all the political alternatives out there so that we can really choose people who will represent us on issues of concern. See also and http://candobetter.net/node/1159.

The decision by the ABC to allow Zaky Mallah to appear on Q and A has attracted much criticism (Advertiser 25/6 and 26/6)). This has been defended by the ABC on the grounds it needs to represent a diversity of views.

I ran as a candidate for the Stop Population Growth Now Party in the SA Legislative Council general election last year. Barely had nominations closed , and before I had approached any media, I received a letter from the ABC informing me that I would not be granted any time on the ABC to explain our party policies.

I am a law abiding, loyal citizen who has lived in Australia all my life.
I have no criminal record. I was nominated by a legally registered political party (with over 300 members) to contest the Fisher by election.
I paid the $8000 expenses (nomination fee $3000, corflutes , how to vote cards etc $5000) out of my own pocket, as our party was low on funds.
Surely I deserved some consideration.

Yet the ABC sees fit to give national exposure to Mallah, who served two and a half years in jail for buying a gun, and threatening to kill ASIO officers.

I am forced to conclude that the ABC is not even handed, and does not properly represent diverse opinions.

Bob Couch
Marino,SA

Yesterday, as the U.S. Senate resolved to ‘fast- track’ the TPP, in Australia, the Productivity Commission came out all guns blazing declaring the ‘free’ trade agreement ‘preferential’ and ‘dangerous’. Bill Davis and Dr Matthew Mitchell report.Republished with thanks from original article at Independent Australia.

See also: The Day the Earth Died and why Sierra Club, Greenpeace, et al. were virtually silent about it (25/6/15) | Global Research

THESE TWO EVENTS occurring on opposite sides of the Pacific should trigger ring alarm bells with the Australian public because the Abbott government is on the brink of signing away our sovereign rights (ISDS clause) amongst other things.

What is the TPP?

Firstly, what is the TPP? The U.S. trade representative’s official description is:

... an ambitious,21st-century Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement that will enhance trade and investment among the TPP partner countries, promote innovation, economic growth and development, and support the creation and retention of jobs.

Here's why the TPP is such a BFD

The economic growth claims have already been debunked by a study conducted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, so if it does not deliver GDP growth, then what is the purpose of the TPP? Professor Jane Kelsey  from the University of Auckland explains the real intention of the TPP [IA emphasis]:

The US aims to revive its geopolitical, strategic and economic influence in the Asian region to counter the ascent of China, in part through constructing a region-wide legal regime that serves the interests of, and is enforceable by, the US and its corporations.

So this proposed TPP “agreement” involves Australia as well as a host of other potential member nations including Brunei Darussalam, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, Canada, Japan, Mexico, Vietnam and the United States. South Korea has also indicated it may sign up.

How far off is agreement on the TPP?

The deal is essentially done in terms of agreement between the 12 countries which make up this bloc and could be signed by end of the year. Fast-tracking the TPP has removed a major impediment in the United States. Fast-tracking is summarised by journalist Dave Johnson as follows:

With fast track, Congress agrees to set aside its duties under Article 1 section 8 of the Constitution and vote on TPP within 90 days of it being signed, to severely limit discussion and debate, not to filibuster the agreement in the Senate and not to amend it not matter what problems turn up after the agreement is revealed. Fast track essentially pre-approves the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement (and future trade bills) before the public gets a chance to know what is in it.'

Overnight, Reuters reported that the Senate voted 60 to 38 giving Obama the power to negotiate the TPP and other trade deals and fast track them through Congress. The bill goes next to President Obama for his signature

Australia’s process for approving trade agreements is not so different to the U.S.’s fast-track process.

AFTINET describes Australia’s process as follows [IA emphasis]:

The Trade Minister presents the text to the Cabinet, which is made up of the Prime Minister and other Cabinet Ministers. The decision to sign the text is made by Cabinet, not the whole Parliament.

The text cannot be changed after it is signed.

Parliament only votes on the implementing legislation, not on the whole text of the agreement. The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), for example, has 29 chapters and only a few of these will require changes to legislation.”

However, many other chapters will restrict the ways in which current and future Australian governments can legislate, but will not require legislation. For example, the inclusion of the right of foreign investors to sue governments over domestic legislation (investor-state dispute settlement or ISDS) does not require a change to Australian legislation. Other changes, like changes to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, could be done by changing regulation rather than through legislation.

As many journalists and commentators have argued, agreements like the TPP have dubious benefits for the populations of the countries involved.

Kelvin Thomson's response to a question about how Multilateral Trade Agreements (such as the transpacific partnership agreements) might affect Australia's ability to control immigration numbers and to control the awarding of local jobs to local firms. He describes how this might be problematic and does not think we should sign any treaties containing an "Investor state dispute settlement clause." He explains why. He also discusses the process which sounds as if it has a distinct bias towards corporations and against citizens. What you can do: Contact your MP and ask them what they are doing and what they have done to stop any signing of treaties with these clauses. If they cannot show they have done anything to stop them, and do not undertake to do so, then let us know and we will publish this information and their photo. (Transcript and video inside.)

Transcript of Kelvin Thomson responds on Multilateral treaties

This question was asked after Kelvin's speech about Intergenerational Equity, where he mentioned multilateral trade treaties..
(Headings and emphases by Candobetter.net editor, for clarity.)

QUESTION: I noticed that you mentioned the multilateral trade agreements. I'm just wondering. I haven't had time to get into them myself and I'd really appreciate a speech in Parliament about their impact on our ability to control immigration and also to control the awarding of local jobs to local firms and things. And anything else you can think of. Can you speak on it off the cuff for a minute?

KELVIN THOMSON MP for WILLS: It is a very serious issue. In the past, the trade agreements were directed at tariffs and quotas - getting rid of tariffs and quotas - but they are pretty much gone. So if you enter into a trade agreement with another country now - with Korea or China or whoever - the issue is, what do they want? And the sorts of things that they want are freeing up of anything in the way of restriction between movement of people, freeing up of foreign ownership restrictions, and things of that nature. So, some of these agreements now have jumped into the area - I think - of diminishing our democratic capacity to determine our own future.

"Investor state dispute settlement clause"

And, in particular, there is a thing called the "Investor state dispute settlement clause", which is in a number of trade agreements. It's not in all of them. It is in the Korean one. It's not in the Japanese one. I assume it's in the China one, but they haven't released it yet - which is another matter of concern about these trade agreements. They get signed and we only get to see them some distance down the track.

But the Investor state dispute settlement clause allows corporations to sue governments if they believe that the decisions of governments impact adversely on their bottom line.

Health impacts

And the classic example of this is when the previous government introduced plain packaging on tobacco products that - and I think it's Phillip Morris - got themselves incorporated in Hong Kong expressly to take advantage of an investor state dispute settlement clause that we've had as part of a trade agreement with Hong Kong. And they are now suing Australia on the grounds that the plain packaging legislation disadvantages them. Now, that in itself is problematic from my point of view. I believe that governments need to be able to make democratic decisions - in this case in the health interests of the nation.

Environment impacts

It's equally problematic in relation to environmental issues. For example, there are foreign companies that wish to engage in coal-seam mining in New South Wales and Queensland and the like, and you have the prospect that if governments there knock them back, that they will be sued in relation to the Investor state dispute settlement clause.

Settlement of disputes lack normal legal standards

One feature of these clauses, which again is very unsatisfactory, is that it's not that you go to some international court which rules - you know, where you've got judges of the High Court, for example, sitting there. They are arbitration arrangements and the arbitrators come and go. They can be people who are acting for the company one day and sitting as an arbitrator the next, and then acting for a company on the day after that. So that the normal legal protection and rules concerning precedent and - you know - traditional independence and the like, are not present, in terms of these disputes.

We should not enter agreements with investor-state dispute settlement clauses in them

And my own view is that we should not enter into any trade agreements which have investor state dispute settlement clauses.

QUESTION: But do members of Parliament have any control over the signing of these things? Do they get to see the agreement?

KELVIN THOMSON: What happens, Sheila, is that the Executive has control over the treaty-making process and they enter into treaties. The treaties get layed on the floor of the Parliament and Parliament has a Treaties Committee which I chaired for quite a number of years and I'm now the Deputy Chair of - so I do have some experience with this. The Parliamentary committee takes evidence, takes submissions and so on. We can listen to people and make recommendations.

Abbot Liberal Government has majority on the Treaties Committee

There is a government majority on the Treaties Committee, as on Parliamentary Committees generally, and so you don't want to be sort of too carried away about the capacity of the Committee to do much once the treaty has been signed, but we make recommendations about whether the treaty should proceed to ratification and, from time to time Treaties Committee has made serious recommendations in relation to ratification and talked about provisions in particular treaties they regarded as unsatisfactory, but we don't have the capacity to look at treaties in the same way that United States members of the Congress do, for example. [Indistinct ?It's said that] they are able to scrutinise the text of treaties and know what is being negotiated. They're not supposed to tell people about it.

Double Standard: Corporations given privileged info; Civil Society kept in the dark

But this question about the negotiation of treaties and the process being followed is interesting because - so when the Treaties Committee talks to civil society, not government organisations and so on - they say, 'This is a highly secret process. No-one knows what's going on.' You know, the train goes into a tunnel and comes out the end of the tunnel and you've got this treaty. But when we talk to corporations, or agriculture groups and the like, they say, 'Oh, no, it's a good process. You know, they tell us what's going on and they keep us informed.' So, it's clear that there is a double standard at work. There are some people who are kept informed and know what's being discussed and negotiated, and a lot of people who don't.

As if the development and construction of 590 Orrong Road isn't enough, residents at 'ground zero' are now facing compulsory acquisition of their homes. They need your help today. You will also be dismayed to learn that Victory Square is at risk of being yet another sports oval in an area so devoid of passive recreation space. When is enough enough?
Read all about it and take action. Originally published at https://orronggroup.wordpress.com/ as an article posted by Hootville, "Urgent: Council’s plan for parkland next to 590 Orrong Rd".

As if the development and construction of 590 Orrong Road isn't enough, residents at 'ground zero' are now facing compulsory acquisition of their homes.

They need your help today.

You will also be dismayed to learn that Victory Square is at risk of being yet another sports oval in an area so devoid of passive recreation space. When is enough enough?

Read all about it and take action: As if the development and construction of 590 Orrong Road isn't enough, residents at 'ground zero' are now facing compulsory acquisition of their homes.

They need your help today.

You will also be dismayed to learn that Victory Square is at risk of being yet another sports oval in an area so devoid of passive recreation space. When is enough enough?

Read all about it and take action:

Victory Square under threat, playground demolished, (yet) more cricket facilities planned. 

The words below come to us from members of a new group: No Confidence in Stonnington, many of whom live near “ground zero”. Not only have these residents been lumbered with the gross over development that is 590 Orrong Rd, they are facing compulsory acquisition of their homes – using money from the developer.

That money – which is obligatory by law – is supposed to compensate locals  for the massive impact of the development. Instead it seems that the money will be spent in ways that hurts locals more and benefit one very specific group in the community. If that’s not enough, the group has drawn our attention to a hideous new possible masterplan for the Victory Square space. It seems that people – dog walkers, parents, kids, older people, joggers, those that just enjoy a (tiny) open space – will be ignored in favour of powerful sports clubs. If what you read below upsets you, learn more and take action at their website.  

Stonnington Council proposes to place a Public Acquisition Overlay over three homes adjacent to Toorak Oval and Victory Square (Amendment C 197) (homes at 10 and 14 Aubrey St and 1aFulton Street). They have already spent over $1.4M quietly acquiring 1 Fulton Street in 2014. They are in a position to spend millions of ratepayers’ funds on potentially acquiring homes because of the developer contributions they will receive, by law, from the Lend Lease development at 590 Orrong Road.

The anticipated open space needs generated by this development should have been provided at that land. The local community should not be required to provide land for the public open space needs generated by that development and had understood the development contributions from that development would go to improving existing open space, not acquiring more land.

Another master plan for Toorak Oval and Victory Square

The existing master plan does not contemplate the expansion of the park area. However, the Council proposes to spend money on yet another master plan for Toorak Oval and Victory Square and preliminary plans indicate that they wish to spend ratepayers’ funds to acquire the three homes and turn them into cricket nets and re-allocated car parking spaces. Victory Square will be turned into a mini football/cricket oval and will see the removal of the much used playground. It is likely that it will not longer be accessible for the many dog owners, parents, children and seniors, who use the park all day, every day.

Object by Monday 2nd February If you agree that this is certainly not the best allocation of ratepayers’ funds, nor the best outcome for the wider community, not just the influential sporting groups, please object. More details and an objection form here.

Professional growth spruiker, Bernard Salt of KPMG, says that 80% of Australia does not want population growth. ("Straightening out Bananas", Property Council Congress, 2011) So how come we are being swamped?

There is a theory to explain how unpopular and costly policies survive in a 'democracy' when the benefits are focused among a few people who can organise to protect those benefits, whereas the costs are diffused among many people thus difficult to recognise and organise against. This theory explains why 80 % of Australia does not want population growth for good reasons like the cost of housing and the wrecking of the environment, but we still have it because the Growth Lobby makes billions of dollars (not just millions) out of it. (See Chapter 5 of Sheila Newman, The Growth Lobby and its Absence.)

The cartoon illustrates this, as an organised and wealthy rent-collecting Growth Lobby Inc. swoops with a helicopter, while people look around them, confused about what’s happening.