agribusiness

California just dealt Monsanto a blow as the state’s Environmental Protection Agency will now list glyphosate — the toxic main ingredient in the U.S.’ best-selling weedkiller, Roundup — as known to cause cancer. Under the Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986 — usually referred to as Proposition 65, its original name — chemicals that cause cancer, birth defects, or other reproductive harm are required to be listed and published by the state. Chemicals also end up on the list if found to be carcinogenic by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) — a branch of the World Health Organization.

In March, the IARC released a report that found glyphosate to be a“probable carcinogen.”
Besides the “convincing evidence” the herbicide can cause cancer in lab animals, the report also found:
“Case-control studies of occupational exposure in the U.S.A., Canada, and Sweden reported increased risk for non-Hodgkin lymphoma that persisted after adjustments to other pesticides.”
California’s decision to place glyphosate on the toxic chemicals list is the first of its kind. As Dr. Nathan Donley of the Center for Biological Diversitysaid in an email to Ecowatch, “As far as I’m aware, this is the first regulatory agency within the U.S. to determine that glyphosate is a carcinogen. So this is a very big deal.”
Now that California EPA’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) has filed its “notice of intent to list” glyphosate as a known cancer agent, the public will have until October 5th to comment. There are no restrictions on sale or use associated with the listing.
Monsanto was seemingly baffled by the decision to place cancer-causing glyphosate on the state’s list of nearly 800 toxic chemicals. Spokesperson for the massive company, Charla Lord, told Agri-Pulse that “glyphosate is an effective and valuable tool for farmers and other users, including many in the state of California. During the upcoming comment period, we will provide detailed scientific information to OEHHA about the safety of glyphosate and work to ensure that any potential listing will not affect glyphosate use or sales in California.”
Roundup is sprayed on crops around the world, particularly with Monsanto’s Roundup-Ready varieties — genetically engineered to tolerate large doses of the herbicide to facilitate blanket application without harming crops. Controversy has surrounded this practice for years — especially since it was found farmers increased use of Roundup, rather than lessened it, as Monsanto had claimed.
Less than a week after the WHO issued its report naming glyphosate carcinogenic, Monsanto called for a retraction — and still maintains that Roundup is safe when used as directed.
On Thursday, an appeals court in Lyon, France, upheld a 2012 ruling in favor of farmer Paul Francois, who claimed he had been chemically poisoned and suffered neurological damage after inhaling Monsanto’s weedkiller, Lasso. Not surprisingly, the agrichemical giant plans to take its appeal to the highest court in France.
It’s still too early to tell whether other states will follow California’s lead.

---

This article (California Just Announced It Will Label Monsanto’s Roundup as Cancer Causing) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Claire Bernish andtheAntiMedia.org.

by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts

from Global Research, June 20, 2012 paulcraigroberts.org Headings inserted by Candobetter Ed.

With her 1962 book, Silent Spring, Rachel Carson got DDT and other synthetic pesticides banned and saved bird life. Today it is humans who are directly threatened by technologies designed to extract the maximum profit at the lowest private cost and the maximum social cost from natural resources. Once abundant clean water has become a scarce resource. Yet, in the US ground water and surface water are being polluted and made unusable by mountain top removal mining, fracking and other such "new technologies. Ranchers in eastern Montana, for example, are being forced out of ranching by polluted water.
http : / / www . youtube.com/watch?v=lZiAV6fU2NM&feature=player_embedded#!

Short-termism

Offshore oil drilling and chemical farming run-off have destroyed fisheries in the Gulf of Mexico. In other parts of the world, explosives used to maximize short-run fish catches have destroyed coral reefs that sustained fish life. http://aquatek- california.com/coral-reef-destruction/ Deforestation for short-run agricultural production results in replacing bio-diverse rain forests with barren land. The "now generation is leaving a resource scarce planet to future generations.

Nuclear power plants are thoughtlessly built in earthquake and tsunami zones. Spent fuel rods are stored within the plants, a practice that adds their destructive potential to a catastrophic accident or act of nature.

Agribusiness

The newest threat comes from genetically modified seeds that produce crops resistant to herbicides. The active ingredient in Monsanto's Roundup herbicide is glyphosate, a toxic element that now contaminates groundwater in Spain and according to the US Geological Survey is now "commonly found in rain and streams in the Mississippi River Basin.

In 2011 Don Huber, a plant pathologist and soil microbiologist, wrote to the US Secretary of Agriculture about the unexpected consequences of GMOs and the accompanying herbicides. He cited adverse effects on critical micronutrients, soil fertility, and the nutritional value of foods. He cited the impairment of metabolic pathways that prevents plants from accumulating and storing minerals, such as iron, manganese, and zinc, minerals important for liver function and immune response in animals and people. He cited toxic effects on the microorganisms in the soil that have disrupted nature's balance and resulted in large increases in plant diseases. He cited livestock deaths from botulism, premature animal aging, and an increase in animal and human infertility.

In an interview, Huber said that the power of agri-business has made it almost impossible to do research on GMOs and that regulatory agencies with the responsibility of protecting the public are dependent on the industry's own self-serving studies and have no independent objective science on which to base a regulatory decision.

In short, in order to secure bumper crops for several years, we are destroying the fertility of soil, animal and human life.

1493, Spanish silver and Chinese floods

Mankind has been destroying the world for a long time. In his fascinating book, 1493, Charles C. Mann describes the adverse effects on the environment, people, and civilizations of the globalism unleashed by Christopher Columbus. These include the international transfer of human and plant diseases, deforestation, destructions of peoples and empires, and the impact on distant China of Spanish new world silver.

Mann provides a history lesson in unintended and unexpected consequences resulting from the actions of elites and of those that elites dominated. The Chinese government fixed taxation in terms of the quantity of silver, but the importation of Spanish silver inflated prices (decreased the value of a given quantity of silver) and left the government without sufficient revenues.

A successor government or dynasty evicted Chinese from the coast in order to deprive pirates of resources. The displaced millions of people deforested mountainsides in order to sustain themselves with terrace agriculture. The result of deforestation was floods that not only washed away the terraces but also the crops in the fertile valleys below. Consequently, floods became one of China's greatest challenges to its food supply.

Slavery and mosquitoes

The first slaves were conquered new world natives, but the "Indians had no immunity to European diseases. The second wave of slaves were European whites, but the Europeans had no immunity to malaria and yellow fever. By default slavery fell to blacks, many of whom had immunity to malaria and yellow fever. Thus, a black workforce could survive the infected environments and newly created wetlands in which to raise sugarcane, wetlands that were ideal homes for malaria and yellow fever bearing mosquitoes. Mann, of course, is merely reporting, not justifying black or any slavery.

Mann points out that the lowly mosquito had a large impact on American history. The Mason-Dixon Line roughly splits the East Coast into two zones, the South in which disease carrying mosquitoes were an endemic threat, and the north in which malaria was not a threat. In the South, a person who survived childhood and grew into an adult had acquired immunity. Northerners had no such protection.

This had enormous consequences when Northern armies invaded the South. Mann reports that "disease killed twice as many Union troops as Confederate bullets or shells. Between the summers of 1863 and 1864, the official annual infection rate for what was called "intermittent fevers was 233 percent. The average northern soldier was felled more than twice. In one year 361,968 troops were infected. Most of the deaths from malaria were indirect. The disease so badly weakened the troops that they died from dysentery, measles or strep infection.

The mosquito was the South's most powerful ally and so prolonged the war, despite the vast numerical superiority of the Union force, that Lincoln was forced to take action that he opposed and declare emancipation of slaves. Thus, Mann writes, it is not farfetched to conclude that blacks were freed by the very malaria mosquito that had caused blacks to be the preferred workforce.

Mann shows that long before the birth of capitalism, greed drove men to barbarous treatment of their fellows. He also shows that policies, whether driven by greed or by well-intended socio-political design, inevitably had unexpected consequences. His multi-faceted history well illustrates the old adage, "the well laid plans of mice and men often go awry.

The old world's colonization of the new world devastated new world peoples, but the new world bit back with the spread of the potato blight to Europe and Spanish and European inflation.

Environmental destruction resulted mainly from deforestation and soils washed away by consequent floods. Prior to modern technology and toxic chemicals, the planet survived mankind.

Externalising costs and corporate influence on governments

Today the prospects for the planet are different. The human population is vast compared to earlier times, putting far more pressure on resources, and the disastrous consequences of new technologies are unknown at the time that they are employed, when the focus is on the expected benefits. Moreover, these costs are external to the business, corporation, or economic unit. The costs are inflicted on the environment and on other humans and other animal life. The costs are not included when the business calculates its profit and return on its investment. The external costs of fracking, mountain top removal mining, chemical farming, and GMOs could exceed the value of the marketable products.

Businesses have no incentive to take these costs into account, because to do so reduces their profits and could indicate that the full cost of production exceeds the value of the output. Governments have proven to be largely ineffective in controlling external costs, because of the ability of private interests to influence the decisions of government. Even if one country were to confront these costs, other countries would take advantage of the situation. Companies that externalize some of their costs can undersell companies that internalize all of the costs of their production. Thus, the planet can be destroyed by the short-term profit and convenience interests of one generation.

Chronological 'progress' illusory

The main lesson that emerges from Mann's highly readable book is that people today have no better grasp of the consequences of their actions than superstitious and unscientific people centuries ago. Modern technological man is just as easily bamboozled by propaganda as ancient man was by superstition and ignorance.

If you doubt that the peoples of Western civilization live in an artificial reality created by propaganda, watch the documentary on psyops at http : / / www . youtube.com/watch?v=lZiAV6fU2NM&feature=player_embedded#! The documentary does a good job despite wandering off into a couple of side issues on which it takes one-sided positions. It is a bit heavy on blaming the rich, and overlooks that Stalin, for example, had plenty of propaganda and wasn't looking to make himself a billionaire. Not all the rich are against the people. Billionaires Roger Milliken and Sir James Goldsmith fought against jobs offshoring and globalism, which increases the powerlessness of the people vis-a-vis the elites. Both spoke for the people to no avail.

US Propaganda and Terrorism laws

The documentary also blames the Constitution for limiting the participation of the mass of the people in governing themselves without acknowledging that the Constitution restricted the power of government and guaranteed civil liberty by making law a shield of the people instead of a weapon in the hands of the government. It is not the Constitution's fault, or the fault of Founding Father James Madison, that the American people succumbed to propaganda by Bush and Obama and gave up their civil liberty in order to be "safe from "Muslim terrorists."

The documentary shows that propaganda is a form of mind control, and controlled minds are indeed the American predicament.

In 1962 Rachel Carson caught Monsanto off guard and thus gained an audience. Today she would not get the same attention. Ready and waiting psyops would go into operation to discredit her. I just read an article by an economist who wrote that economists have decided that environmentalism is a religion, in other words, an unscientific belief system that preaches "religious values. This demonstrates what little importance economists attribute to external costs and the ability of externalized costs to destroy the productive power of the planet. Thus, the question, "silent spring for us? is not merely rhetorical. It is real.

Dr. Roberts' latest book is Economies in Collapse: The Failure of Globalism, published in Europe, June, 2012.

Paul Craig Roberts is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Paul Craig Roberts

Humane Society investigation reveals workers kicking piglets like soccer balls, swinging sick piglets in circles, and ruthlessly beating mother pigs, who were trapped in 'gestation crates'.

Source of photo: URL:Piglets Are As Cute As You Thought They Were, But Far More Interesting

May 12, 2012

On Tuesday, The Humane Society of the United States released undercover video footage revealing cruel treatment of animals and inhumane conditions at a Wyoming pig breeding facility owned by a supplier to Tyson Foods. The investigation revealed workers kicking piglets like soccer balls, swinging sick piglets in circles, and ruthlessly beating mother pigs. Along with individual acts of animal abuse, this investigation also highlights the suffering pigs endure when locked in metal "gestation crates" where they cannot even turn around for nearly their whole lives -- a standard pork industry practice.

The Platte County Sheriff's department and Wyoming Livestock Board are now investigating the abuses for potential violations of the state's anti-cruelty statute. And, since the release of the investigation, Tyson has suspended its purchases from this supplier. However, Tyson needs to do more: It must stop allowing its suppliers to confine pigs in gestation crates.

Burger King, McDonald's, Wendy's, Safeway, and other major food companies have announced, at the urging of The HSUS, that they'll remove gestation crates from their supply chains. Tyson is lagging far behind and still defends this extreme confinement. We need your help to move the company to do the right thing. Please help pigs by urging Tyson to stop allowing them to be confined in tiny gestation crates.

Wayne Pacelle,
President & CEO
Humane Society of the United States

This year many Australians may wish they had a backyard to grow food in. Already impoverished by rising costs for rent, land and power, this year we will see food go through the roof as the impact of the floods in Queensland and Northern New South Wales carries through to the supermarkets and then to interest rates on mortgages and other loans. And, since so many of us rely on jobs in the cities originally generated by the production, transport and packaging of food from the country, unemployment will make things worse. When Australians find that their wages no longer cover the cost of food this year, perhaps more will understand why there are so many articles on this website protesting about the loss of backyard and the rise of Food Inc.


The point is that, if most of us still had access to a backyard with fruit trees and a vegetable patch, and a neighbour with a paddock and a few animals, we simply would not run the same risk of starving, given a disaster or two, as we will if population growth continues and the cost of living outpaces the value of wages and the availability of paid work.

Bangladesh, Australia

Australians are used to responding to the news of devastating floods in third world countries, such as Bangladesh, almost annually. We read of many lives lost and crops lost, then of food shortage and disease.[1] More people have been drowned in Bangladesh floods[2] than have been drowned in the Queensland floods, although Bangladesh has recently made progress with strategies for evacuating populations.

Floodplains covered by houses in an elitist economy with an irresponsible government

In Queensland, Australia, land-speculation has taken precedence over prudence and flood-plains have been covered with houses. Local laws meant until very recently that property owners could sue local councils for lost potential profits if they were prohibited from clearing and developing land, notably farmland. The Queensland Government encourages land speculation at all levels and places pressure to develop new land for more intensive settlement by vigorously encouraging interstate and international immigration. The results are predictable and many tragedies could have been avoided:

"Major flooding causing inundation of large areas, isolating towns and disrupting road and rail links occurs on average about every ten years somewhere in the South-East Queensland region. Smith (1998) estimated that around 35% of the buildings at risk from flooding in Australia are located in Queensland, with 21% being in the South-East Queensland region. The large numbers of buildings at risk of flooding in South-East Queensland is exacerbated by the absence of Statewide floodplain management regulations which might typically aim to preclude residential development in areas subject to flooding up to the 1% AEP (100 year ARI) level. In Queensland such regulations are left to individual Local Government Authorities (LGAs) to establish." (Source: Miriam Middelmann, Bruce Harper and Rob Lacey, "Cost of Flooding" in "Chapter 9: Flood Risks", at http://www.ga.gov.au/image_cache/GA4210.pdf)

The flooded area in Queensland and NSW is many times larger than the whole of Bangladesh.

Damage

Because Queensland/Northern New South Wales produce far more food and fuel (coal) for local and overseas consumption than Bangladesh, the impact of destroyed crops and interruptions to mining by the floods will be massive. [3]

"The state government estimates 100 million dollars a day is being lost in coal exports with floodwaters disrupting operations at at least 40 coal mines - and the damage to industry and agriculture is so severe that banking analysts predict it will hurt the nation's gross domestic product." (Source: "The soaring financial cost of the floods," SBS, 6 January 2011, www.sbs.com.au/news/article/1459892/The-soaring-financial-cost-of-the-floods)

Damage to personal property and assets will be formidable, and questions are likely to be raised by insurers where residences have been built on floodplains. People will be traumatised for many years by their losses and experiences in these floods. Some may never recover their emotional well-being.

Agribusiness and the real-estate economy have deprived us of life-saving options:

James Sinnamon wrote in "How to make our agricultural sector sustainable," in 2008,

"The government needs to control the activities of any sector where they threaten the viability of other sectors, particularly vital sectors like food production. To risk severe social disruption for short-term profit might make sense to corporations, but it is the duty of governments to mitigate corporate excesses and to direct and balance activities so that the community is buffered and major conflicts are avoided.

... If incomes to be earned from sustainable farming practices are low in comparison to those to be earned by working in the city or in mines, then we need to consider whether those economic activities are sustainable."

Indeed. This year many Australians may wish they had a backyard to grow food in. Already impoverished by rising costs of rent, land and power, this year Australians will see food go through the roof as the impact of the floods carries through to the supermarkets. And, since so many of us rely on jobs in the cities originally generated by the production, transport and packaging of food from the country, unemployment will make things worse. When Australians find that their wages no longer cover the cost of food this year, perhaps more will understand why there are so many articles on this website protesting about the loss of backyard and the rise of Food Inc.

How will they feel about the heroic marketers of a big population for Australia when we cannot meet our own food needs, let alone earn export income to pay for our imports?

Aggressively imposed government policies, such as paving over market gardens close to city, as described in "Vic Gov to trash Melbourne's water recycling market gardens for quick bucks in thirsty new suburbs,")and concentrating agriculture into what amount to 'agribusiness zones' - see "Orwellian Waterworks: big-agribusiness and Victorian Gov") by removing local individual capacity to supplement food production, have left Australians virtually defenseless against food shortage, particularly in the case of disasters affecting the national economy. This officially encouraged chicken now comes home to roost with the destruction of agricultural produce we rely on by this week's 'biblical' floods in Queensland and Northern New South Wales.

Queensland flooding and climate change

There are many historic accounts of flooding in the area currently affected. See a collection of quotes and figures at http://www.ga.gov.au/image_cache/GA4210.pdf, pages 9.16 to 9.31.

And it's not like the government wasn't formally warned that floods will probably get worse in the future:

"CSIRO (2000, 2001) regional modelling experiments show thatQueensland could be warmer with more downpours, with the possibility of more cyclones, stormsurges and flood events. The effect of regional climate change on particular sectors has been examined for rangelands (Howden et al., 1999-a) and for wheat cropping (Howden et al., 1999-b).These studies show, that while it is possible to adapt production systems in many areas, and that some areas may in fact benefit, in other areas production systems could become marginalised and disappear altogether. The blue and green water systems will be driven by global change and human management, and more resilient systems have the best chance of long-term survival." Barney Foran and Franzi Poldi, Future Dilemmas, CSIRO Resource Futures, October 2002, p. 210

But, in fact, the Howard Government which commissioned the report imposed economists who were out of their depth on the scientific team and suppressed the scientists' frank conclusions, which were that it was foolish to keep growing our populations and to keep pushing the boundaries of agriculture and development. In the end, it seemed they got rid of one of the chief scientists, Barney Foran, who wrote a personal report, entitled, Between a Rock and a Hard Place. See the 2002 Four Corners report at www.abc.net.au/4corners/.../2002b_Tuesday5November2002.htm

Linsay Tanner and Bangladesh

Reacting to Kelvin Thomson's sane expression of fears as Australia's Federal and State governments continue to engineer faster and faster population growth in Australia, in 2009, the then Treasurer, Linsay Tanner, compared Bangladesh favorably with Australia, suggesting that Australia should have a much bigger population because Bangladesh does ...

"Bangladesh is roughly twice the size of Tasmania, and home to about seven times the population of Australia. If Australia seeks to persuade the rest of the world that we are overpopulated, we will be rightly laughed at,'' Mr Tanner will say, according to a copy of his speech supplied to The Age." Ari Sharp, "Population fear is nonsense: Tanner," The Age, November 13, 2009.

To many people Tanner's comments seemed the ultimate in callousness and absurdity. How could a democracy like Australia have a politician who talks like Tanner? How could a democracy like Australia become like Bangladesh?

Just look at Queensland now.

Beware Disaster Capitalism

The political corruption of the State of Queensland is another factor that will move Queensland and Australia closer to third world status in the wake of natural disasters like this one. If the Queensland government remains true to form, it wferer: http://candobetter.net/nohe floods as an excuse to borrow money internationally and to sell off remaining public assets to private interests. See Naomi Klein's book, The Shock Doctrine, which gives the history of this style of government. It was Klein who coined the term, "disaster capitalism," to describe a widespread form of economics where finance moves in on wounded countries and offers help ... at a terrible price involving asset stripping, dispossession and disenfranchisement.

NOTES

Each year in Bangladesh about 26,000 km2, (around 18%) of the country is flooded, so far[when?] killing over 5000 people and destroying 7 million homes. During severe floods the affected area may exceed 75% of the country, as was seen in 1998. This volume is 95% of the total annual inflow. By comparison only about 187,000 million m3, of streamflow is generated by rainfall inside the country during the same period. The floods have caused devastation in Bangladesh throughout history, especially during the years 1966, 1987, 1998 and 1988. The 2007 South Asian floods also affected a large portion of Bangladesh.

[2] 2004 Bangladesh 730 killed
(Source: http://www.searo.who.int/LinkFiles/Publication_&_Documents_EHA_FOCUS.pdf)

[3] 36 000 000 affected; US$ 2 200 000 000 damage (Source: http://www.searo.who.int/LinkFiles/Publication_&_Documents_EHA_FOCUS.pdf)

Illustration adapted from one here.

This is an excerpt from an article originally published on April 24, 2010 as #more-1828">"S 510 is hissing in the grass by Steve Green.

In "Hissing in the Grass," Steve Green writes that

S 510, the Food Safety Modernization Act of 2010,  may be the most dangerous bill in the history of the US.  It is to our food what the bailout was to our economy, only we can live without money. 

“If accepted [S 510] would preclude the public’s right to grow, own, trade, transport, share, feed and eat each and every food that nature makes.  It will become the most offensive authority against the cultivation, trade and consumption of food and agricultural products of one’s choice. It will be unconstitutional and contrary to natural law or, if you like, the will of God.”  ~Dr. Shiv Chopra, Canada Health whistleblower

It is similar to what India faced with imposition of the salt tax during British rule, only S 510 extends control over all food in the US, violating the fundamental human right to food. 

Monsanto says it has no interest in the bill and would not benefit from it, but Monsanto’s Michael Taylor who gave us rBGH and unregulated genetically modified (GM) organisms, appears to have designed it and is waiting as an appointed Food Czar to the FDA (a position unapproved by Congress) to administer the agency it would create — without judicial review — if it passes.  S 510 would give Monsanto unlimited power over all US seed, food supplements, food and farming.

History

In the 1990s, Bill Clinton introduced HACCP (Hazardous Analysis Critical Control Points) purportedly to deal with contamination in the meat industry.  Clinton’s HACCP delighted the offending corporate (World Trade Organization “WTO”) meat packers since it allowed them to inspect themselves, eliminated thousands of local food processors (with no history of contamination), and centralized meat into their control.  Monsanto promoted HACCP. 

In 2008, Hillary Clinton, urged a powerful centralized food safety agency as part of her campaign for president.  Her advisor was Mark Penn, CEO of Burson Marsteller*, a giant PR firm representing Monsanto.  Clinton lost, but Clinton friends such as Rosa DeLauro, whose husband’s firm lists Monsanto as a progressive client and globalization as an area of expertise, introduced early versions of S 510. 

S 510 fails on moral, social, economic, political, constitutional, and human survival grounds.

1.  It puts all US food and all US farms under Homeland Security and the Department of Defense, in the event of contamination or an ill-defined emergency.  It resembles the Kissinger Plan.

2.  It would end US sovereignty over its own food supply by insisting on compliance with the WTO, thus threatening national security.  It would end the Uruguay Round Agreement Act of 1994, which put US sovereignty and US law under perfect protection.  Instead, S 510 says: 

COMPLIANCE WITH INTERNATIONAL AGREEMENTS.

Nothing in this Act (or an amendment made by this Act) shall be construed in a manner inconsistent with the agreement establishing the World Trade Organization or any other treaty or international agreement to which the United States is a party.

3.  It would allow the government, under Maritime Law, to define the introduction of any food into commerce (even direct sales between individuals) as smuggling into “the United States.”  Since under that law, the US is a corporate entity and not a location, “entry of food into the US” covers food produced anywhere within the land mass of this country and “entering into” it by virtue of being produced. 

4.  It imposes Codex Alimentarius on the US, a global system of control over food.  It allows the United Nations (UN), World Health Organization (WHO), UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and the WTO to take control of every food on earth and remove access to natural food supplements.  Its bizarre history and its expected impact in limiting access to adequate nutrition (while mandating GM food, GM animals, pesticides, hormones, irradiation of food, etc.) threatens all safe and organic food and health itself, since the world knows now it needs vitamins to survive, not just to treat illnesses. 

5.  It would remove the right to clean, store and thus own seed in the US, putting control of seeds in the hands of Monsanto and other multinationals, threatening US security. See Seeds – How to criminalize them, for more details.

6.  It includes NAIS, an animal traceability program that threatens all small farmers and ranchers raising animals.  The UN is participating through the WHO, FAO, WTO, and World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) in allowing mass slaughter of even heritage breeds of animals and without proof of disease.  Biodiversity in farm animals is being wiped out to substitute genetically engineered animals on which corporations hold patents.  Animal diseases can be falsely declared.  S 510 includes the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), despite its corrupt involvement in the H1N1 scandal, which is now said to have been concocted by the corporations.

7.  It extends a failed and destructive HACCP to all food, thus threatening to do to all local food production and farming what HACCP did to meat production – put it in corporate hands and worsen food safety. 

8.  It deconstructs what is left of the American economy.  It takes agriculture and food, which are the cornerstone of all economies, out of the hands of the citizenry, and puts them under the total control of multinational corporations influencing the UN, WHO, FAO and WTO, with HHS, and CDC, acting as agents, with Homeland Security as the enforcer.  The chance to rebuild the economy based on farming, ranching, gardens, food production, natural health, and all the jobs, tools and connected occupations would be eliminated.

9.  It would allow the government to mandate antibiotics, hormones, slaughterhouse waste, pesticides and GMOs.  This would industrialize every farm in the US, eliminate local organic farming, greatly increase global warming from increased use of oil-based products and long-distance delivery of foods, and make food even more unsafe.  The five items listed — the Five Pillars of Food Safety — are precisely the items in the food supply which are the primary source of its danger. 

10. It uses food crimes as the entry into police state power and control.  The bill postpones defining all the regulations to be imposed; postpones defining crimes to be punished, postpones defining penalties to be applied.  It removes fundamental constitutional protections from all citizens in the country, making them subject to a corporate tribunal with unlimited power and penalties, and without judicial review.  It is (similar to C-6 in Canada) the end of Rule of Law in the US.

For further information, watch these videos:

Food Laws – Forcing people to globalize
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ia-P4rL2IWc 

State Imposed Violence … to snatch resources of ordinary people
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onw_PkVvpts&feature=related 

Corporate Rule 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PwqUQ_HIlg&feature=related

Reclaiming Economies
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXoJHG-er7A&feature=related

Oak snake image at Alfred B. Maclay Gardens State Park, Florida

http://snipurl.com/vrg6p

Click here to see an excellent film interview with Christopher Cook, who wrote, Diet for a Dead Planet about the industrialised world's grossly inefficient industrialised food processing and distribution system (notably the US branch.) A quite rivetting book that goes into the destruction of small farms and the evolution of today's system, with full documentation.

The film-link below takes you to the same film (The Official Meatrix) as the link in the teaser to this article.

Ed. (Sheila Newman) Last year I spent a lot of time editing with Alice Friedemann a new version of her essay, "Peak Soil" for a book called The Final Energy Crisis (2nd edition) Pluto Press, UK, 2008. I was impressed by the way her writing made the reader sit up and see that soil was not just dust and minerals, but alive. Here's a typical paragraph:

"There’s so much life in the soil; there can be 10 “biomass horses” underground for every horse grazing on an acre of pasture. Just a tiny pinch of earth could have 10,000 different species - millions of creatures, most of them unknown. If you dived into the soil and swam around, you’d be surrounded by thousands of miles of thin strands of mycorrhizal fungi that help plant roots absorb more nutrients and water. As you swam along, plant roots would tower above you like trees as you wove through underground skyscrapers."

When I read Dairyman Dave's explanation of soil structure, published below, although it is much shorter and quite different in style, I was similarly impressed by a capacity to evoke interest and understanding in what for most people is an invisible, indestructible firmament, taken for granted.

Soil structure by Dairyman Dave

When I was very young, 18, I remember taking a college course on agronomy, taught by an old professor with white hair. Many years later I realized the values he was trying to teach us. It became clear that he wasn't too fond of the direction that agribusiness was taking agriculture but he had clout and was "allowed" to speak his mind some of the time. For example, he taught us how hybrid corn was made and why but at the same time he pointed out that non-hybrid corn could be just as good and to prove it he always planted some in his test plots so he could show us. Of course, I couldn't have cared less at the time.

He retired the next year; they finally got him out of the way. He also posted a philosophical truth across the blackboard each day which no one paid any attention to, of course.

This man stressed the importance of soil structure and spent time explaining what it was and how it is made and what destroys it. Again, I couldn't have cared less at that time of my life; the course was required. I was into engineering, high tech stuff, important stuff.

I will try to explain soil structure. Think of the World Trade Center buildings before they collapsed. They had structure. After they collapsed, aside from the dust, all the materials were still there but without structure. Imagine that we want to add to the building materials. We dump a few truckloads of cememt, steel and glass on top of the rubble. It's all there but still no structure.

This is how modern farming works; we just dump on the materials and mix it in. Heavy machinery crushes whatever structure there might be. We farm without the structure.

But healthy soil has structure. What would it take to change that pile of rubble back into the World Trade Center? Who would do it? How much energy would it take? Answer: I couldn't do it, you couldn't do it. It takes experts to do it, it takes lots of time and it takes lots of energy. Those experts are the soil organisms, many different experts, and we need to give them their due respect...and get out of the way and give them what they need to do the job. These "bugs" like good food, not just minerals and lignin. Only they can build soil structure.

Dairyman Dave is a US farmer

Hmmm...

On 12 August 2009, Water Minister, Tim Holding said that
"The Liberal, National and Greens parties have today sought to deprive Melbourne and Victoria’s stressed rivers, like the Murray River, from water saved through irrigation upgrades. In an unprecedented move, opposition parties voted to disallow the Bulk Entitlement (Eildon-Goulburn Weir) Conversion Further Amending Order 2009." His interpretation was that, "This prevents water savings from the Food Bowl Modernisation Project from going to the environment and to Melbourne households and businesses via the north-south pipeline." (Government website press release 12-9-09)

Now, why would the Greens and the Liberal Nationals all vote together like that?

So what's really going on?

We provide three articles based on three press releases.
Greg Barber's is probably the most comprehensive.
To summarise, he says that:
- Because there is no water to divert at the moment no-one is losing anything by stopping to discuss the matter
- The government is refusing to reveal its 'business case' without which no-one can judge its economic and hydrological claims
- The government has attempted to proceed without Federal Environment law clearance
- The government is not providing verifiable accounting data and measures for outsiders to assess the project
- The project appears more political than hydrological
- Commerce seems to be trumping water security
- Environmentally it's a case of suck and see since there is no indication that anyone knows what the impact of the proposed changes will be
- The project is already destroying the social ecology of farming communities.

See "Greg Barber: Disallowed Bulk water Entitlements lack detail, provide no environmental warranty"

Greg Barber: Disallowed Bulk water Entitlements lack detail, provide no environmental warranty

Mr BARBER (Northern Metropolitan) -- It is very clear to me what the impact of this motion being passed will be, and that is nil. The Greens' only interest in this particular resolution is to attempt to get the government to the negotiating table to deliver on some of the rhetoric that was promised at the beginning, and for that matter to deliver an outcome for the environment.

"Lip-service to the environment has been the defining characteristic of this entire debate."

This project started as a duplicitous political exercise and it is going to finish the same way, and everything that the coalition and government speakers have said today just reinforces that. We are in an environmental crisis in the Murray-Darling Basin, and lip service to the environment has been the defining characteristic of this entire debate. What the Greens are trying to achieve here is a skerrick of improvement in the Murray-Darling Basin's current ecological state.

If the government in its initial promises was going to be delivering on that, it would be delivering it here today chapter and verse in the text of this agreement. It is clear it is not because aside from some nebulous words -- 75 gigalitres to the environment -- there is no environmental warranty here, and I will spend most of my contribution describing why that is the case.

Government is refusing to make its 'business case' available for scrutiny

Certainly, though, this issue does deserve financial scrutiny. I have already moved a reference to a parliamentary committee whereby that can occur, but the one thing we need as legislators, and the one thing that every Victorian should have access to, is the business case -- the government's fundamental decision-making document -- for this project, and it is the one thing that government will never, ever hand over.

Desal plant and North-South Pipeline related

We saw that yesterday where the government, in record time, turned around a request for the business case relating to the desalination plant, and since both this project and the desalination plant are feeding into the same group of water users, the business case for one and the business case for the other relate directly to each other. That is obvious and fundamental. In fact, it is the entire basis on which water policy, in its requirement to be commercial for water users, is founded. But as long as the government point-blank refuses to tell Victorians what this project costs and what it will deliver by way of water dollars per megalitre, we cannot even begin to have that debate.

Destroying farming communities

The social impact is important. It is unfolding before our eyes across the Murray-Darling Basin. The social ecology of irrigation farmers is in turmoil as much as the other environmental values that the Greens would frequently speak of. But again this project is but one driver of that.

How it is occurring is not something that was examined up-front, nor is there a single source to understand that if you are concerned about the social impact of this project, which we are. The social impacts of this and the effects of climate change together are profound.

Environmental costing of project avoided and no responsibility taken - "Suck it and see"

I will turn back to the environmental question which has bobbed up and down in the political debate as we have gone along and never once has been definitively nailed down. What is the environmental cost of this project? This represents a new low for the government in the way it is willing to treat the environmental issues surrounding a project. The best illustration of that is in the Minister for Planning's decision under the Environmental Effects Act where he gives his reasons for not requiring an EES. It states:
“Any impacts of modified hydrological regimes on aquatic and riparian ecosystems are unlikely to be amenable to detailed, predictive studies (such as which might form part of an EES), but are instead suited to mitigation through adaptive management of water flows to maintain ecological values.”

There is a lot of jargon there. To break it down for you: 'We have no idea about the impacts of this project; therefore, we will track them as we go along. Therefore, why bother doing an EES?'. That is a process issue, but it is major concern to the Greens in the Parliament because we are here to legislate and when the legislation we deal with and rely on allows that kind of behaviour by a government, the process issue is very important.

Approval from Federal Government still not granted

Secondly, this project has not yet received approval from the federal government.

As with a number of other projects, the government likes to get the thing under way, sign the contracts, do every other approval it needs, get the guy sitting on the back of the bulldozer with the engine running, and then say, 'Let's get approval from the federal government for matters of national environmental significance'.

The reason I say this one is a new low is that they have gone past that and have already started the works, and they are arguing, perhaps correctly, that the works per se -- the lining of the channels, the installation of meters and so forth -- in and of themselves have no environmental significance, or minimal environmental significance; it is how we use the water operationally afterwards that has the environmental significance. The government has used that with a compliant federal minister to say, 'We are going to build the thing and then we will ask for environmental approval from the federal minister'.

Government jugganaut designed to dishearten and overwhelm democratic objection

This is all designed to keep the politics rolling, to keep pushing the thing along to overwhelm everybody else, to dishearten anybody who might want to put a contrary view, to fight this issue, to stand up, and that is why I say the politics here are absolutely duplicitous.

The Coalition needs to come clean as well

But they are equally so from the coalition. With the greatest respect to my next-door neighbour here, Mr Hall, who was sincere in the statements that he made, he almost completely ducked the issue of what the coalition would do. He hinted at one point that if there was a genuine audit of the savings and the savings were found to be real, then maybe they could be shared 75-75-75 amongst the three users.

Mr Hall -- Simultaneously.

Mr BARBER -- Simultaneously. He did not say, 'That is the coalition's position'. We just sort of sensed that that might be a good idea. That is not good enough because we are in the run-up to the election now.

He talked on a number of occasions about promises that the government had made and broken, but he did not take the opportunity to make any himself.

This is the opportunity to do that because we are putting together in this document the bulk entitlement which controls the allocation of water in this basin.

It is simply not enough for the wannabe, alternative government -- the opposition -- to say the government has broken its promises. Here it should be saying, 'This is the bulk entitlement. This is the alternative bulk entitlement that we will move if we are the government in 18 months time'.

The Real impacts

I now turn to the real impacts. There is more than enough information in the proponent's documents -- that is, the Northern Victorian Irrigation Renewal Project (NVIRP) documents -- to start to shine a light on the real environmental impacts. Some aspects of that document give us a real and scary picture of what might happen.

Other documents simply attempt to model it, fail, say data is insufficient and gloss over it.

The Minister for Planning's conditions then reflect this by saying, 'We will suck it and see with this project'.

For example, we know a large part of the savings that are meant to be generated here are from outfalls -- that is, situations where water is going down an irrigation channel and for various reasons cannot go to the place it is supposed to go. It gets to the end of the channel and overflows into what is normally a low point in the district, which in the past has often been a natural wetland. It has also been a river or sometimes a drain that has been constructed -- those drains go somewhere and sometimes they end up in rivers or wetlands. On other occasions the water is sucked out of the drain and used for some other lower value agricultural use -- that is, an agricultural use that requires a lower value or reliability of water.

The document details specific instances where these so-called savings will in fact be savings at the expense of the environment. The government is taking water from the environment and then saying, 'We are great guys. We are giving 75 gigalitres to the environment'. While that might work nicely as a book exercise and may not be able to be interrogated terribly well through a question without notice -- and I have asked a number of those over a number of years seeking data on this project as we have gone along -- it does not stand up when you start to look at some hard data.

Consider Lake Elizabeth in the Kerang Lakes which prior to this investigation was receiving outfalls of 400 megalitres a year, according to the estimates available. That is 400 megalitres of real water; that is measured water. Remember when we talk about 75 gigalitres, we are talking about a 75-gigalitre entitlement. So far this year, from what I can see on Goulburn-Murray Water's website, entitlements for every system are shaping up to be zero.

With the traditional irrigation season having already started, allocations for the Murray, Broken, Goulburn, Campaspe, Loddon and Bullarook Creek systems are zero. A 75-gigalitre entitlement times 0 per cent allocation equals zero water. The practical effect of this bulk entitlement being passed now for this coming season is zero. That is why the Greens are opposing it: in practical terms, leaving out the process issues I started to address, it makes no difference right now. The government, if it wanted to, could stand up right now and move a motion to defer this debate and enter into some negotiations with the Greens to achieve a genuine environmental outcome and even a better outcome than envisaged.

By the way, it is interesting to look at historical seasonal allocations for different water systems because as recently as 2001-02 a number of these systems were getting 200 per cent of their water allocations. As recently as 2005-06 systems were receiving 170 per cent of their water allocations.

In the last two years -- taking the Goulburn and the Murray as the two biggest systems -- the Murray allocation has fallen from 144 per cent to 95 per cent to 43 per cent to quite possibly 0 per cent this year, while the Goulburn allocation has fallen from 100 per cent to 29 per cent to 57 per cent to 0 per cent as far as we know. That is how fast, from an irrigator's point of view, this problem appears to have snuck up on the government. From an environmental entitlement point of view, the problem is just as bad if not worse because environmental entitlements, even when they are high security, suffer the same effects. All the existing environmental entitlements that are sitting there as accounting entries, if you like, in Lake Eildon and other lakes are about to get zero allocations.

Coming back to Lake Elizabeth, it is interesting to note that the outfalls that were historically occurring into Lake Elizabeth had started to be withdrawn by Goulburn-Murray Water even before the NVIRP arrived. In a number of places in this document the NVIRP proponent notes that the impact from reduced channel outfalls as a result of its project is less because Goulburn-Murray Water has already been quietly withdrawing that water. That really got me going, so I invited Goulburn-Murray Water to our Standing Committee on Finance and Public Administration inquiry and put to it that for a number of years now it has been doing projects similar to NVIRP but not as large. I asked if it had ever sought environmental approval from the federal minister. 'Absolutely', it said, but when it went away and checked, it turned out it had not.

It turned out it had written to the federal environment minister saying, 'This is what we are intending to do', and he said, 'Well, if you do not do a formal referral, it is your risk. It is your risk that your project could be found to have a significant impact on matters of national environmental significance and therefore you would be in trouble'.

I then went away and did an FOI request on this so-called strategic measurement program that Goulburn-Murray Water had been running prior to NVIRP coming in and introducing its program. It was able to give me details of the water that it had been measuring since 2006-07 for dozens of different outfalls. In some cases we were able to match those outfalls to wetlands, particularly those with high environmental values. In other cases they go into rivers and may form part of the environmental flow of rivers. In yet other cases it is not clear where they go.

When you tot it up, it turns out that 14 gigalitres of water was going out of the system when Goulburn-Murray Water first started monitoring these outfalls. Through monitoring and other activities that Goulburn-Murray Water has done, it has got that down to 5 gigalitres. When it added more monitoring in another set of outfalls, it found 17 gigalitres going out of an outfall; as I said, it has reduced that down to 5 gigalitres.

Something like 11 gigalitres of water has already been withdrawn from wetlands, rivers and possibly other parts of the environment without federal environmental approval. It was a precursor. It was a pilot project to this NVIRP project, if you like, and it was done on the sly. We have to remember when we are talking numbers like this that this is 11 gigalitres of actual water. Depending on which system it was in, if that system at that time was on 50 per cent allocation, it could have been double that amount in terms of allocations if we are trying to compare that to 75 gigalitres.

No Federal Environment approval but trying to operate anyhow

I think it is a deadly serious issue to have a government entity operating out there without federal environmental approval and just thinking it can do things on the quiet. It is only because this NVIRP project, which is much bigger in scale, came along that Goulburn-Murray Water started to get touchy about federal environmental matters.

However, as I said, the federal minister has not yet received a referral for this project. Nonetheless the government wants the Greens to pre-approve the water. It will do the EES later. It will not even be a state EES; the government will just measure it as it goes and provide some water for those wetlands -- in fact, the government will not even assess environmental values right now.

No structure appears to be in place to meet Min for Planning's conditions

The government could have, through its lead speaker, jumped up and said it is doing a number of things that the Minister for Planning required it to do. I quote from his conditions:

“Before operation of relevant works commences, NVIRP must prepare a framework for protection of aquatic and riparian ecological values through management of water allocations and flows ... having regard to written advice to be sought from the expert review panel ...”

I cannot find any evidence that that panel has been created. It may have been, but its outcomes are not available to us. It is not on the NVIRP website, and I cannot find it anywhere else. The conditions continue:
“... and following consultation with the Minister for Environment and Climate Change.”

The minister was sitting in the chamber a minute ago, but I did not hear him speak on this matter.

The following condition is the kind of thing that might start to encourage us that there is an environmental outcome here. It requires:
“A statement of environmental commitments or performance requirements in relation to managing the ecological consequences of hydrological changes arising from implementation of NVIRP, including to avoid any contribution to diminishing ecological values in waterways and wetlands. This statement is to describe arrangements for the sourcing, allocation and management of water required to mitigate the project's potential ecological impacts.”

That is the statement I would like to see, but I do not think it is there. If it were, we would be specifically embodying its outcomes in this bulk entitlement.

Elsewhere in the bulk entitlement there are some very specific provisions relating to matters that we are not contesting here today. One says that savings from the Wimmera-Mallee pipeline will be allocated to Little Lake Boort via the Waranga Western Channel up to a total of 300 megalitres during May to September inclusive every year. That is a very specific entitlement that will pass today because it is not part of what we are attempting to disallow and it is designed to protect Little Lake Boort. We have no such guarantee for Lake Elizabeth.

Those who are interested in Lake Elizabeth might be aware that it was originally the home of a particular fish which is a favourite fish of Mr Drum's -- the Murray hardyhead. This fish became locally extinct in Lake Elizabeth a couple of years ago, around about the same time that Goulburn-Murray Water was withdrawing water. It continues to withdraw this water, and this project proposes to continue this without the guarantee of putting water back.

From thousands of wetlands to only 23 and these are not even guaranteed

We could go through every one of these high-value wetlands -- these 23 priority wetlands, as they call them -- but

we have to be aware that this assessment itself started with thousands of wetlands across the whole Goulburn-Murray area. The government then rejected most of them for further study by saying, 'We will just look at the high-value wetlands', and reduced the number to under 100, and then it ditched a bunch of others and said, 'There are really only 23 that are affected in this way, so what we will do is come up with these environmental watering plans afterwards'.

Government members have come in here and asked, 'Don't you know we are giving 75 gigalitres to the environment?'. No, I do not know. This bulk entitlement reads more like a press release. It simply gives out shares -- 75 gigalitres to Melbourne, 75 gigalitres to the environment and 75 gigalitres to irrigators -- and says, 'Trust us. We will do the right thing' ex post facto.

Every reason to distrust this government on water

If you were going to trust the government on this, you would go back to an earlier issue -- Ms Broad has quite a history on this -- and that is the Snowy. Does Ms Broad remember that promise? It could not have been a more high-profile exercise. The promise was that 21 per cent of the Snowy River's flow would be restored. The then Premiers of New South Wales and Victoria, Bob Carr and Steve Bracks, went up to the headwaters, had their photo taken, jumped over the river, opened up the sluice gates -- even the Man from Snowy River was there. It could not have been a higher profile exercise. The promise was that 21 per cent of the Snowy River's flow would be restored. The experts' request was for 28 per cent as a minimum -- as usual, you get even less than what the experts say is a minimum. What are we getting today? A few per cent. You have to scratch your head. How can an exercise like that, which attracted so much fanfare, deliver so little 10 years later? Think of the Snowy when you hear that claim about 75 gigalitres, because this measure will be about as effective.

Coalition needs to stop treating this as a political football: the issues are momentous

There are issues about the calculation methods and how the savings are derived. Again it is all ex post facto. It is not clear up to this point whether the Minister for Water himself has actually complied with the conditions for approval of the Minister for Planning, let alone the conditions that the federal government might have. It is certainly not clear to me what alternative the coalition is offering. It could have announced another policy. It could have given someone an exclusive last night, and then this morning we would be coming in here and saying, 'This is how the coalition will have the bulk entitlement so as to make future provision for water coming down the north-south pipeline'. According to Ms Broad, the Leader of the Opposition in the other place, Mr Baillieu, said, 'In a crisis, we look at all options'. It would be possible to write this bulk entitlement to include triggers whereby the water could be used in a particular crisis, but we do not have any details about this.

It is not good enough in the run-up to an election to simply treat this issue as a political football with the two alternative governments trying to wedge each other, then getting wedged and then trying to wedge again, because I have seen those exercises before. The people who get wedged are the people in the wider community -- and the environment, but the environment rarely has its voice.

What is being debated here is not the whole story. It will not solve the problem. Neither option offers any warranty to the environment or, for that matter, the livelihoods of people in towns and communities who depend on water. Neither option guarantees a future for the Goulburn Valley nor offers hope or a way forward

For that reason the Greens will support the disallowance of particular sections of the bulk entitlement. Members of the coalition were well aware that the Greens would have moved this motion if coalition members had not. However, neither that outcome nor what the government is offering is satisfactory; neither option offers any warranty to the environment or, for that matter, the livelihoods of people in towns and communities who depend on water. Neither option guarantees a future for the Goulburn Valley nor offers hope or a way forward, even in the sense that it will be a difficult crisis but we have a direction for a way through. I get the sense this issue is not over.

North-South pipeline is more a political project than a hydrological one

The government had the option to sit down with the Greens and go through these issues. We have requested information through freedom of information, we have asked questions without notice, we have raised matters in the media, we have written to federal minister Peter Garrett, and we have been actively engaged in this issue. But because it is a politically derived project, there was never any sense that anything was going to stop it; it was just bound to keep going.

Government members have made it quite easy in some ways for the coalition -- and maybe for the Greens, and for Mr Kavanagh; I do not know -- because they have already said,

Government: 'We will simply issue a section 51 licence from another section of the Water Act'. There is no doubt that that explains why government members are not the least bit interested in addressing our concerns. It is because they think they can get out of it through another legal avenue.

However, it is interesting that in that section of the act the matters the minister must consider before issuing the licence are the same matters that must be considered before gazetting a bulk entitlement.

Maybe we won't get answers until downstream the project lands itself in court

Licences issued under that section are subject to appeal, so it will be interesting to see if the exact matters we have argued through the legislative process end up being argued in a court somewhere, where perhaps some of the facts we have been so desperately trying to expose can for once be tested. Perhaps the people in the community can be offered not just an environmental and social future but some answers to the questions they have been so regularly and constantly asking.

Source: Bulk water entitlements disallowed
Bulk Entitlements lack detail, provide no environmental warranty

Greens, Greg Barber MLC
12/08/2009

On Wednesday, 12 August 2009 the Victorian Parliament Upper House passed a motion moved by the Liberal Nationals Coalition to disallow parts of a water regulation which would have seen the Brumby Labor Government break key water promises.

The Coalition’s disallowance motion was supported by the Greens and DLP member Peter Kavanagh.

Coalition spokesman says it opposed the order because it broke three key promises

Leader of The Nationals and Shadow Minister for Regional and Rural Development, Peter Ryan, said the Coalition opposed the order because it broke three key promises made to Victorian communities.

The government’s intention was to redirect water to Melbourne through the north-south pipeline despite it being promised to the Snowy and Murray rivers,” Mr Ryan said “Labor also planned ‘negotiating with the Commonwealth’ on distributing savings from the second stage of the Food Bowl Modernisation Project, which contradicts its original promise of allowing the water to be split 50/50 between farmers and the environment.

He added that, “Furthermore the order lacks the necessary rigour in auditing savings from the Food Bowl Modernisation Project.” Mr Ryan said the Coalition was determined to hold the government to account over its promises to the environment, to irrigators and communities in northern Victoria.

Mr Ryan accused the Government of attempts at "looting water" due to failing to plan for Melbourne's future water needs

“Today’s successful disallowance motion in Parliament highlights the overwhelming opposition to the Government’s attempts to loot water from food producers and the environment because it has failed to plan for Melbourne’s future water needs,” Mr Ryan said.

“Labor’s hyperbole that by disallowing this order, the Coalition has denied water to the environment and Melburnians is factually incorrect.

“The ball is now in Premier Brumby and Minister Holding’s court to actually come back to Parliament with a fair and honest amendment to the bulk entitlement.

“Such an amendment should include a rigorous auditing process for savings which is approved by Parliament and where environmental water and savings that are meant for irrigators are delivered to them, rather than to Melbourne.”

Greg ... of the Greens commented that the Coalition should not treat the matter like political football and should do more than just criticise the Government. It should tell the electorate what it will do if it comes to power.

Order would have breached committments regarding Foodbowl Modernisation Project

(The Foodbowl Modernisation Project has problems of its own - see articles.)

The Victorian Liberal Nationals Coalition has successfully moved to disallow parts of the Bulk Entitlement (Eildon-Goulburn Weir) Conversion Further Amending Order 2009 that would have breached commitments the Brumby Government made to the community regarding the Foodbowl Modernisation Project, according to Member for Northern Victoria Region Wendy Lovell.

Ms Lovell, who is vehemently opposed to the north-south pipeline, spoke about the disallowance motion in the Legislative Council after it was introduced by the Coalition this morning.

The Coalition’s motion disallowed parts of the Bulk Entitlement (Eildon-Goulburn Weir) Conversion Further Amending Order 2009 because it breached three key commitments the Brumby Government made to food producers, the environment and Victorian communities.

To go ahead would break promise to protect health of Snowy and Murray rivers through the Water for Rivers Agreement

“The Brumby Government would have broken its promise to provide savings from the Central Goulburn 1234 Modernisation Project to protect the health of the Snowy and Murray rivers through the Water for Rivers Agreement,” Ms Lovell said.

“According to the Order, Brumby Government has also reneged on its commitment to split savings from Stage 2 of the Foodbowl Modernisation Project 50/50 between farmers and the environment, and will instead distribute savings ‘based on future negotiations with the Commonwealth.’

Inadequate auditing of 'foodbowl modernisation process'

“The Order also failed to establish a proper measure and audit process for water savings made from the foodbowl modernisation process.

Instead of an independent audit, the Order bizarrely stated water savings would be calculated ‘in accordance with calculation methods approved by the Minister for Water’, therefore at the Minister’s discretion.

“The Order clearly breached commitments the government made to the environment, food producers and Victorian communities and shows the Brumby Government is prepared to place the future of farming communities and our rivers in jeopardy for the sake of sending 75 gigalitres of northern Victoria’s water to Melbourne."

Yet more unforgivable promise-breaking

(For another unforgivable Brumby-whopper see "The Battle for Brown Mountain is on")

“The Brumby Government has already broken the ultimate promise, which Labor made in 2006 when it said it did not support taking water from north of the Great Dividing Range to meet Melbourne’s future needs, and the Coalition will work diligently to hold the government to its promises to the environment and northern Victorian food producers,” Ms Lovell said.

Source: BRUMBY’S BULK ENTITLEMENT FOR NORTH-SOUTH PIPELINE DISALLOWED
Wendy Lovell Liberal Leader of the Upper House
Wednesday, 12 August 2009

The message coming from Fair Water Use Australia is that the Federal and State Governments are not handling Australia's water properly, transparently or effectively. The mishandling is causing a dangerous crisis. The public should be very concerned and NGOs should support Fair Water Use and the UN in their call for a state of emergency and a Royal Commission. Australia, this is really serious.

Higher rainfall should mean more water - so where is it going?

Higher rainfall should mean more water in public and environmental reserves, but it is going to private holdings instead and the public is not aware

Private sector increases its strangle-hold on the Murray-Darling

Data obtained by Fair Water Use from the Bureau of Meteorology and the Murray-Darling Basin Authority provides confirmation of the effect of the rapid increase in privately-held water in the Darling Basin on the volumes of water available for essential public and environmental use, refuting claims that the crisis in the Darling is predominantly drought-related.

image from Fair Water Use site http://www.fairwateruse.com.au/

Despite average-to-above average rainfall in the Darling Basin over the last two years, the amount of water flowing down the Darling has reduced dramatically.

image from Fair Water Use site http://www.fairwateruse.com.au/

Public H20 store 80% less than it should be

Storage in the Menindee Lakes is currently around 80% less than would be expected under average rainfall conditions. As there has been no similar increase in volumes released from the Lakes, the water-hoarding activities of the private sector stand clearly incriminated.

There can be little doubt that, although compounded by drought, rampant water-privatisation is also a major contributor to the current devastation of the Murray catchment. However calculations are impeded by the apparent unwillingness of State Governments to provide required data.

UN Senior Water Advisor supports State of Emergency and Royal Commission on MDB Water

Fair Water Use is encouraged by the recent support of the senior water advisor to the United Nations for its call for declaration of a State of Emergency and the establishment of a Royal Commission of Inquiry into the management of the water of the Murray-Darling Basin. Such actions offer the only means whereby Australians can regain control of this vital and acutely-threatened resource.

Listen to interview.

Source: Fair Water Use Australia. Fair Water Use Australia strives for a revived Murray-Darling basin by supporting environmentally sustainable water-use.

Invest in growth but go live on another planet

I have friends with money who occasionally discuss with me how they should invest it, because I write about land-speculation and resource depletion, railing against population growth, in absolute contrast to their professional investment advisers. I tell them they should invest it in all the things they are morally against. The old adage that 'money is the root of all evil' can also be switched around: "Evil is the root of all money." They should buy land in the path of environmentally destructive, overpopulation-facilitating, new roads and railways. They should invest in coal, uranium, agribusiness, and they should invest in water. Then they should leave this planet and collect their dividends from somewhere safe.

About fifteen years ago I published an article in the Weekly Times (which was buried on about page 70) about how continued population growth in my state (Victoria, Australia) would lead to water scarcity and cause the city to draw water from the country. I was right then and I am right now: it is going to get worse. Seeing the fulfilment of my prophesy has taught me a lot about the economic and social system most of us reading and writing in English live within. It seems to be no different from the political systems which have brought official third world countries down, despite what we are constantly told by the media and mainstream environment groups about being rich 'first world' citizens living in a democracy. Not a natural capitalist or even endowed with much spare cash, I have never been able to bring myself to invest in my country's downfall, or I might have bought shares in water, as well as in property development, coal and uranium.

Permaculture

I did, however, invest in permaculture. With the help of a friend who was doing a permaculture course, I planted an orchard and began cultivating a vegetable garden, the better to survive the financial crash which we both thought anyone with remotely sparking synapses should be able to see coming. (That was in 2003 or 2004).

A few years later, the confluence of the rising tide of population and declining rainfall was used by the Victorian government as an excuse to raise the price of water and drastically reduce its supply to suburban homes. "We've all got to get used to the reality that the climate is drying and the population is growing", the government said, as if the pressure of population had nothing to do with their invitations to come to Victoria and their redesignation of every part of the state as a region in need of immigration.

Vale Victoria the "Garden State"

Before 1992 Victoria was called, "The Garden State". This term was actually embossed on licence plates. Then came the shock merchants. First a conservative (Liberal) government dominated both houses of parliament, led by Mr Jeff Kennett. It rammed through severe changes to land-use planning, removing many rights from citizens about what could be done to the state and their neighborhood and amalgamating and renaming local boundaries in a confusing way.

Kennett tried to boost population numbers but only succeeded in stemming the flow to Queensland, a state then known for its cheap land. But he literally paved the way for overpopulation by normalising the removal of democratic barriers to intensification of development. After Kennett, in 1999, a Labor Government dominated Victoria, led by Mr Bracks, a Catholic.

Mr Bracks out-did the conservatives, teaming up with a slew of developers and engineers and the mainstream media (which sells real-estate all over the planet and funds life-style and home-improvement programs on t.v.) to transform Victoria into a kind of single-industry real-estate economy. Like a kind of smiling, evil genius, he actually convinced Victorians that their population was falling, instilling a fear that perhaps they were all going to go extinct, yet, at the same time, convincing them that Victoria needed more houses for the growing population. Bracks and his side-kick, Mr Thwaites, having started off a population-juggernaut, suddenly jumped ship and left the State in charge of their back-seat driver, the Treasurer, Mr Brumby.

Brumby racheted up Victoria's population growth to extremes it had never reached before, giving rise to this arcane remark by Ms Danielle Green in Parliament on 16 April 2008:

"(...) it is now expected that the population growth predicted in 2001 is actually going to be here in 2020 rather than in 2030. (...) - it is like 1 million people coming around to your place next Sunday and expecting a sausage at a barbecue."

From being able to water whenever you felt like it, now - because of the 'big barbecue' the government had scheduled without consulting the rest of us - you could only water twice a week between the hours of 6 am and 8am. This is the time when nine to fivers are on their way to work and shift-workers are sleeping. At the same time we hit mid-summer with scorching heat that turned leaves to crisps and caused the native trees to drop their branches. Along the Murray Darling River system, our major food-basin, ancient red-gums that had survived European settlement until then, were giving up the ghost.

Water hysteria

Victorians became obsessed with water. Australians became obsessed with water. Not only was water restricted, but you had to 'invest in' - hell, you had to buy - new trigger-devices so you could turn your hose on and off like a gun, whilst you held it, or run the risk of arrest. I bought a couple that were supposed to fit any diameter hose, only to find that they didn't fit my hose. Taking them back to the store would have cost me a fortune in petroleum (the price of which was also rocketing up) so I worried instead.

I had a very small metal tank (pictured at the top of this article), but every time it rained I gathered the water in baths and buckets, with the sense that my life-blood was slipping down the drain. It was never enough. Fruit fell off the trees before it ripened and it was all I could do to stop the trees themselves from dying. How I hated the government and idiotic Victorians who prattled on stupidly about 'saving water' instead of running out of town the contemptuous and well-paid 'economists' and politicians who were preparing Victorians for the idea that they should pay up to 5% of their incomes for water in the future because of Victoria's population growth.

The logistics and hygiene of water conservation and use were confusing and tiresome. If one 'saved' water by brushing one's teeth using a glass of water instead of running the tap, should one then pour the rest of the water glass onto the tomatoes or should one use it to rinse the sink. If you took a quick shower and saved the water at the base of the shower, how long could you leave it until you used it? Could you use it on the vegetables? One could spend hours in the hard-ware shop choosing ribbed hoses to connect to the washing-machine and laundry drain-pipes, only to find that the joints would leak under the house. "It's all guess-work," the shop-assistant said, shrugging her shoulders.

Tension in the suburbs

Tension rose in the suburbs. We were reported to the police for 'wasting' water after someone turned our front garden hose on for a prank. This happened twice, until my nervous mother disconnected the hose and hid it. A friend’s wife picked him up from day surgery and, as they entered their driveway, he pointed to a neighbour who was hosing her four-wheel drive down in the street, and complained somewhat groggily of how he himself was unable to keep their garden alive. His wife then went up to the neighbour and accused her of water-profligacy, and not only that, on her use of a SUV in a time of imminent petroleum depletion. The two neighbours dueled verbally on the footpath and things have never been the same between them again. In another case a man succumbed to a heart attack after he was attacked by a passer-by for hosing his garden (with tank water as it turned out.)

The money required to purchase and install a large tank was a huge outlay for me. I kept the radio turned off in order to avoid the government's incessant dishonest moralising about "Saving water for future generations" when I knew that it was touting for immigrants simply to boost the price of water and land, and scheming to divert water to agribusiness.

My new tank

Eventually, however, I 'invested' in a large tank. I had intended to install it myself but discovered, to my consternation, that it would not fit in the place I had meant for it to go, which had a down-pipe in situ. I thought about the problem for months, and how I might connect it to other down-pipes, but the problem overwhelmed me, so I thought I would have to call a plumber. Only because of the construction down-turn, was I able to get one to come. I was amazed and impressed by the comparative grandeur of the system he designed. First he tilted the gutters on my large tin roof so that all the water converged at a single point. He then connected that point to a pipe that went down into the ground, then up into the rotund plastic reservoir perched picturesquely under the loquat tree. He then ran another pipe out of the big tank, underground, then up again to the little tank, which would take the overflow. It crossed my mind that a series of short pipes between the tanks would have used less material and not have required three men to dig pits, but I was too glad to see the plumber to argue with him.

The joy of capitalism

I was riveted by my new water-wealth. Suddenly I was experiencing capitalism at its rawest. Shakespeare's 'gentle rain that falls, unstrained', [Portia's speech inThe Merchant of Venice, in case you had forgotten] had triumphed until then, but, now that I owned the means of production, this suddenly changed. I could collect the stuff in vast quantities. If the drought continued long enough, I could sell glasses of it to passers-by as they struggled up the hill in the heat. Water became a source of fascination. I found contemplation of the habits of piped water fascinating; the fact that it will run up-hill so reliably, as long as it starts higher than the final destination seemed magical. I couldn't wait for it to rain to prove this to myself. Luckily we soon had an exceptional downpour and the big tank half-filled up in one afternoon. It rained for several days after that. I spent a lot of time tapping the big tank to work out how much water was in it. I felt that soon I would hear water coursing down the out-pipe to my little tank. Each time it rained, I pressed my ear to the out-pipe where it surged up like a serpent from the ground, awaiting a percussive modulation as the water flowed through it to the metallic tank and splashed to meet the somber mosquito nurseries within. The big tank seemed bottomless; there was no overflow. I began to wondered about blockages and air pressure.

The Woes of capitalism

Then, one awful night, I heard a new sound like a massive waterfall outside the bathroom. The rain was smashing down on the garden and forks of lightening alternated with deafening thunderclaps in a kind of infernal disco. I raced out in my pyjamas with a torch. Water was gushing out of the tank like a volcano, roaring down the side, forming a river in the front garden which was flowing under the house. I grabbed a ladder and climbed up the side of the tank to peer into the fountain, with the locat tree clawing at my head and face, and mosquitoes dining off my ankles and arms. The tank was full to overflowing. More aghast than anything that I was losing all this water, I ran about in the rain looking for bits of hose and gutter to use to divert the fountain from the big tank into the hole in the top of the little tank, but nothing worked, and the fury of the storm eventually chased me back inside.

The torrential downpour continued over several days. The plumber came after it stopped. The sand at the base of the tank had eroded and the tank was leaning over to the left. The plumber diagnosed the problem in the fact that the height of the outlet pipe exceeded the height of the inlet pipe. I tried not to even think about the oddness of a plumber making such a mistake. The only thing to do was to drill a new hole and insert the outlet pipe lower down. If I allowed him to empty the tank (all 2,500 L) he would be able to straighten it, but not before. But I knew that if I emptied the big tank we would immediately enter a drought. There was no danger of the tank rolling down the hill and killing anyone. I suffered at the idea that, due to its angle, the big tank's capacity would be diminished by an amount approximately equal to the capacity of the little tank, around 500 L.

Downturn: Reservoir capacity reduction

As a water capitalist, I had been counting on having at my disposal about 3000 L. I despaired at the idea of being reduced to only 2500 L. It was like Scrooge McDuck being told that his millions would stagnate, devoid of interest due to a mistake on the part of the bank, which would cost him more to rectify than it was worth.

The irony is, of course, that I will not earn any money from this water I have supposedly invested in. I paid, all up, somewhere in the region of $2,500 to connect the new tank. I will be paying more for water. I will not be selling from my garden for a profit; it isn't big enough. I only want to be able to supplement my diet in times of hardship, or, if necessary, trade with neigbours. The only people who will ever make a profit out of my water are the tank manufacturers, salespeople, those who transported it, the pvc pipe manufactuers (Mr Pratt, the pipe-manufacturer who helped the Victorian government to market the piping of water all over the State) and the plumber. When I planted my orchard there was no problem with using tap water. Now, simply to keep the trees alive, I had to get a tank. Even the water I have saved, I once would have had for free.

Corporate trolls under bridges and farmers walking off the land

One of the greatest evils of this age is speculation on water and its privatisation. It reminds me of the early kingdoms, which were not tidy little territorial blocks, but rather positionally advantaged perches and fortresses at crucial passes. Perhaps one of the first positional advantages exercised was when a tribe upstream diverted water to exert pressure for favours from a tribe downstream.

Such is the situation of the water capitalist, who buys up water then speculates on it, taking it above the purchasing power of most ordinary farmers. And the infrastructure merchant, who pipes the water, adds to the insult to injury by charging farmers fifty and a hundred thousand for the pipes and pumps to bring the water onto their land. No farmer can farm without water. At this point the capitalist offers the farmers money for their land, which is cheap since it has no water and they have no bargaining power. PlugThePipe farmers are in this dire situation and the Victorian Government is in public private partnership with the corporate group who are taking the incumbent farmers' water from them.

Your garden may be all that stands between you and starvation as we enter permanent economic contraction

In all seriousness, the situation of the suburban gardener who cannot get enough water to keep his plants alive, is of great importance in these times of financial hardship. We need to slow down the economy to cope with petroleum depletion and so as to avoid increasing greenhouse gas production. People who once relied on income from full-time jobs can no longer count on this. The corporations and firms engineered the situation where people became absolutely dependent on their providing work for wages. They encouraged policies that ended in us giving up food-gardens and they pushed to commodify water. They urged governments to increase population so that the price of land for housing they invested in would rise exponentially.

Big Business and Government must return water to citizens

Now, at the very least, the world of business that so transformed our democracy, owes workers land for food-gardens. Huge changes in land-use planning will be needed to restore the capacity for the bulk of the population to supplement their survival by growing food. Big business and government should resile from promoting population policies which further increase demand for land and water.

It has now been raining solidly for two days. This afternoon I went for a walk in the rain in the bush for two hours and got thoroughly soaked. On the way back I passed three well-dressed suburban children who were running back and forth outside their home filling a variety of receptacles from the stormwater flowing in the gutter. It will be good practice for when they grow up and have to carry water for kilometers from the water-merchants. Or perhaps they will become water merchants themselves and no-one will any longer remember that time when water was almost free – as indeed, were we. (Big sigh)

Oh, come on! We've got to fight this harder!

Mon Jul 14, 2008
Volunteers remove parasites from the shells of tortoises

Hundreds of Australian long-necked turtles are the latest victims of the demise of the lower reaches of the Murray-Darling Basin. [The Murray Darling Basin is Australia's major riverine system and principle foodbowl.]

Volunteers cleaning victims of worm and market-logic

Small turtle, Big message

The message is that, in the Environment Minister, Penny Wong's scheme of priorities, South Australia's southern lakes long-necked turtles, don't rate much against an irrigation incumbent from the big end of town. For Australia's cash-obsessed government, economic growth may seem to out-rate the turtle, but remember Aesop's fable about the slow and steady turtle against the hare. Thermodynamics tell us that the turtle outlives the hare due to superior thermodynamic efficiency over the long haul. Consider in this light, that respect for nature, rather than subservience to the inhuman market, carries the greater chance for the survival of humans and their civilisation in this desert country. (Sheila Newman)

(Film briefly showing worm-affected turtle but also gives good info on frightening impending collapse of riverine system.)

The turtles that live on the Murray mouth in the Coorong Lakes have been infected by a parasitic bristle worm that thrives in hyper saline waters.

A Goolwa resident, David Surmon, has organised an emergency rescue service for the turtles.
He says that he has saved something between 200 and 300 tortoises, but that he finds more dead each day.
He was reported by Bronwyn Herbert, to say that,

"In the last week I've found around about 13 or 14 dead and that's all deadly in the case of the bristle worm - because what happens is the turtles, if they can move, they get up onto the shore and they can't go any further because there's so much weight."

He added that foxes and rats attacked the encumbered turtles and killed them.

Apparently the bristle worm attaches itself to the turtles' shells and then the infestation slowly increases from then, creating a huge encrustation on the turtles upper and lower shells. The turtle can be trapped inside its shell by the growth of the encrustation. Its legs may not reach the ground anymore, or the worm-infestation may become so heavy that the weight prevents the turtle from moving.

Surmon was quoted by interviewer Bronwyn Herbert, saying that the rescue group had "...actually weighed one, one time, and it weighed nearly seven kilos. And that was a very small turtle. On the back of the turtle was around about three or four inches high of bristle worms."

Turtle rescuer, David Surmon, describes how the team he works saves as many turtles as they are able to reach by taking the turtles from the river and putting them in a big bathtub of rain water. They leave them there for about two or three hours, which is enough to kill the worm. Afterwards the volunteers liberate the turtles from their prison by scraping the dead worm and its encrustation off the turtles carapaces.

"Believe it or not pure fresh water, even tap water will actually kill the bristle worm because it is not used to living in fresh water," David Surmon says.

He said that when he had around a dozen of them, he generally took them further up-river, freeing them up above Murray Bridge.

According to Surmon, the Coorong Lakes comprise very important habitat for turtle reproduction and are the location of a significant breeding population.

Many of us would agree with David Surmon that "Without the wildlife in the river and around the river (...) All we've got is just a big, big mud pan that's going nowhere."

He sounds like a kind and thoughtful man, able to take responsibility and initiative, and to communicate something very significant about our society, our government, and our river system, by reading and interpreting important signs from generally overlooked inhabitants of this badly treated country.

Photos of turtles and their human helpers republished with kind permission from Citizens saving turtles from Murray-Darling crisis The film from you-tube was a selection by the writer.

Word is that Melbourne is getting its 1 million more ten years early and that the Vic Government is in a panic because it has no idea how many permanent new guests have taken up its foolhardy invitations to come and stay. Who the hell is responsible?

Melbourne 2008: Living in a destruction zone

Once Melbourne number plates bore the motto, "The Garden State."
Then we got Kennett's formula, "Victoria on the Move." It sounded like some kind of unnecessary laxative, prescribed by a mad surgeon. Kennett tried to beat population up and, unfortunately for us, stopped the Victorian diaspora to Queensland. I guess he prepared the way for what Bracks did to Melbourne. Him and the editors and senior writers of the Fairfax and Murdoch press, who nagged shamelessly for population growth.

Since the Bracks Population Summit (2002) the Victorian government have ranted continuously and illogically about how we 'have' to have 1 million more Victorians. For local councils, population Projections exist in two forms:

Council data only go to 2011
ABS "Victoria in the Future" (VIF) series go to 2031.
But ...
The ABS has just discontinued VIF figures in circumstances which could mean that Victoria's actual growth has overshot both target and projections and has shot into the stratosphere. The word is that we are getting our 1 million more ten years early and that the Victorian government is in a panic because it has no idea how many permanent new guests have taken up its foolhardy invitations to come and live here.

This is almost certainly the reason for the hasty attempts to introduce draconian new "no-go", "slow-go" and "go-go" residential areas (now described as "areas of 'limited change', 'incremental change' and 'substantial change'.

“What I tell you three times is true.”
(Lewis Carrol, The Hunting of the Snark)

One of my most difficult tasks in writing about these matters is to overcome the propaganda which says that we must have economic growth and that for economic growth we must have population growth.

The Federal and State governments and the news-media repeat this all the time, despite much contrary evidence, and most people believe it because they have no other source of information.

On the one hand the State Government actively seeks to attract more and more immigrants to Melbourne.

On the other, it pretends that population growth is some irresistible force over which it has no control and for which we must all make way no matter what the demands.

Verify this by going to the Victorian Government’s immigration pages at http://www.liveinvictoria.vic.gov.au
Here's a sample of www.liveinvictoria.vic.gov.au:

and there is a special page to assist private immigration agents.

Yes, your government is really working overtime to overpopulate this country.

Alice in Victoria

Asking the public to accept massive intensification of infrastructure, huge cost increases, and loss of rights and space, and nature, on the grounds of a responsibility to reduce greenhouse emissions whilst bearing government imposed, unnecessary population growth is an Alice in Wonderland task.

Alice laughed: "There's no use trying," she said; "one can't believe impossible things."
"I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast." (Alice in Wonderland.)

But the Government is asking of the public to believe impossible things through the Melbourne 2030 program. Even the so-called independent auditors of Melbourne 2030 keep up the ridiculous charade:

Whilst recognising that almost everyone except developers hates Melbourne 2030, the ‘auditors’ of it write in their ‘independent report’:

“At the same time, local communities must be prepared to take a broad metropolitan view that recognises the necessity of urban consolidation,” they write, giving the reason as:

“(…)the urgent housing need resulting from unprecedented population increase and the need to reduce travel and greenhouse emissions to meet our responsibilities towards climate change.”

But even the Auditing Committee shows some unease, although not enough to save Melbourne or to question all the growth. They wrote:

“The recently released report of the Ministerial Working Group Making Local Policy Stronger (June 2007) and the subsequent State Government Five Point Priority Action Plan recognised community concerns in relation to existing residential zones. It proposed a way forward by enabling the identification of ‘no-go’, ‘slow-go’ and ‘go-go’ residential areas (now described as areas of ‘limited change’, ‘incremental change’ and ‘substantial change’) (...)”

“We would caution strongly, however, that the implementation of the five point action plan will not ease community tension unless local communities play a significant role in the application of new zones.”

Is conning the public going to make up for oil depletion and water scarcity?

Analyse the problem:

• Growing the population and expanding infrastructure will increase the number of car trips and the distance travelled.
• Modern high-rises are power-hungry.
• Building upwards increases the electrical power requirements for air conditioning, heating, drying clothing, moving things and people up and down in lifts and pumping water upwards.
• It is harder to cool and heat high-rises and it is harder to cool large, dense cities.
• Reducing vegetation reduces rainfall and cooling.
• Reducing access to land deprives people of access to vital resources when governments fail (as they invariably do.)
• Our Victorian government has already failed us by overshooting our water supply. It has attempted to supplement that supply by costly, power-hungry technologies, notably desalination. It has undertaken in ignorance an impossible promise to deliver these with alternative technologies.

Analyse the propaganda

We are running out of water, fuel, and affordable food; native flora and fauna are threatened, and democracy has been sacrificed to growth.

Driving these problems is Melbourne 2030 in its role as a vehicle for imposing massive population growth.

But what is driving Melbourne 2030?

Population growth via immigration is not, as we are led to believe, a kind response to the starving millions of the world.

And it is not to create a better world for the rest of us.

• Apart from a small number of refugees, the immigration program is actually all profit-driven by big business in Australia. The profit goes to a corporate and investor caste well out of the reach of the middle and the working classes.

• The number one profiteers in population growth in Australia are international property developers, which include Finance, construction, real-estate, engineering.

The 2002 Bracks Population Summit …

…was largely auspiced by Property Developers, in APop (The Australian Population Institute) and mortgage financiers. As well as Australia’s mainstream Press – Fairfax and Murdoch - which own www.realestate.com and www.domain.com.au, Mr Richard Pratt and Mr Steve Vizard, both involved in criminal activities for financial gain, were very prominent in this event.

Perhaps the two biggest peak bodies currently coordinating government lobbying on population growth to advantage the industries they represent are:
• The Property Council of Australia
• The Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering Sciences (working with the Scanlon Foundation and the Australian Multicultural Foundation.

Here are the main aims of the Property Council of Australia, from their own document, "Powerhouse 2010 Update" downloadable as a powerpoint file here

Don't you love it! Melbourne - and the rest of Australia - under permanent construction.
Ah, the excitement of choking traffic in the mornings; the challenge of breathing in that dust.
The joy of watching your favourite piece of nature paved over.
The engagement of foregoing sleep to write useless submissions to your local member and state government.

Gee, our taxes at work! 33% of my wages. And then, on top of that, there are those rising council rates, that burgeoning homelessness, those skyrocketing rents, those outrageous property prices, that choking traffic...

And, here is their latest 'branch' member - the Victorian Government.

The Problem: Organising against population growth, dispossession and life-threatening hardship as oil and water deplete.

The mainstream media and government are corporatised and represent the interests of the corporate world. We cannot rely on them for information, guidance or to organise. We need to communicate outside of them: Internet, word of mouth, books, films, meetings and markets.

Organising requires comunication between neighbours and kin and power at a local level.

Default human social structure is along kinship lines of family and clan.

• Local Communities with a history together and especially with intact or strong kinship structures have the best chance of organising to survive well.

• Current land-use planning and population programs structurally split- up communities and prevent them from organising.

We need to challenge local laws that stop us having livestock and water for growing food.

• We need to re-design our communities so that we can grow food and keep domestic animals.

• It is vital to get back and conserve full use of suburban land and water. So look out for ways to do this.

The government is public-private corporatising rural land and giving more and cheaper water to their agribusiness program. Agribusiness does not care about you and me; agribusiness quotidienly watches people starve. That is why we have to fight government attempts to retain our water for other uses. We need it.

Laws should be primarily for benefit of local communities, then integrated into region and continent

Inheritance and Land-tenure systems need reform along Roman-law lines, like Western Continental Europe.

Roman-style laws
• Preserve land within families
• Share land equally between men and women
• Minimise land fragmentation and speculation

Basically this means that our inheritance system and land-use allocation and planning system need reform towards:

• male and female equal inheritance,

• prohibition against disinheritance of children (legitmate or illegitimate), and

• leasing to substitute for land-sales

Remember:

Cheap goods are the baubles to seduce and distract today’s indigenous populations.
Today’s indigenous populations are us.
We who were born here.
Let us not be distracted by beads and baubles.

• Land with water and a stable population and society are what counts.
• Land speculation is a mug’s and a con-man’s game.
• High profits in any field are not sustainable in the long term.
• No society that encourages one class to profit at the expense of all the other citizens is sustainable.

The following was posted in response to an article Working the land - or not of 24 Jun 08 by Jenny Hume on Web Diary.

This article raises the vexing question of how we are to live sustainably off the land in the longer term. If incomes to be earned from sustainable farming practices are low in comparison to those to be earned by working in the city or in mines, then we need to consider whether those economic activities are sustainable.

The government needs to control the activities of any sector where they threaten the viability of other sectors, particularly vital sectors like food production. To risk severe social disruption for short-term profit might make sense to corporations, but it is the duty of governments to mitigate corporate excesses and to direct and balance activities so that the community is buffered and major conflicts are avoided.

Clearly in the case of mining, and in that light, the current activities are not sustainable, as I argued earlier. Is it any wonder that farmers, who are ultimately attempting to turn the comparative trickle of energy obtained from the sun into wealth, cannot offer wages competitive with those on offer from industries which are, in large part, simply plundering energy accumulated over at least tens of millions of years by biological and geological processes? If other city-based economic activities were also placed under the microscope, we would invariably find that they are also ultimately based upon the unsustainable destruction of the our finite capital.

So, agriculture has been placed at an extremely unfair disadvantage compared with other economic activities. To expect it to compete with those other activities under these circumstances would guarantee the destruction of our soil and our future impoverishment. As David R. Montgomery's Dirt - the Erosion of Civilisations (2007) shows, this is far from being just a theoretical question.

If we are to establish an economy which is to be sustainable in the longer term, we are going to have to face the fact that many of us may find unpalatable, that is, whether we live on the land or in cities, we are going to have to learn to live by consuming far fewer material resources than we do now. Even if we eliminate many absurdly wasteful practices of our throw-away society, and even if we remove the enormous inequalities in income distribution, we may still find ourselves without the same access to all the convenient gadgets and comforts to which we are now accustomed. We are going to have to get used the idea that we won't all be able to travel by air to the other side of the world every year or across the continent every two months or so, or be able to buy every gizmo we desire almost at will only to throw them away a mere 12 months later.

Of course one first and necessary step will be to remove the often crippling burden placed upon on farms by the finance sector, which, in turn, drives farmers to ruin their land. As I mentioned earlier, one means towards achieving this would be to re-establish a Peoples' (i.e. Commonwealth) Bank.

On top of that, the rest of us should consider paying more for food in order to allow farmers to be able to both earn a decent income and to properly look after the land. It would also help if were to change the grossly inefficient industrialised food processing and distribution system (the US version of which is described lucidly in the US by Christopher Cook's Diet for A Dead Planet – See YouTube broadcast). Breaking the Coles Woolworths duopoly would help. Similar to the re-establishment of a Peoples' Bank, why not establish a publicly owned supermarket company that only has to meet its operating expenses and not pay inflated returns to its shareholders, company directors and CEO's? Local cooperative producers' markets could complement the aforementioned Peoples' Supermarket to allow as much food as possible to be consumed locally.

Local food distribution and consumption would reduce transport, storage and packaging costs, which can only continue to climb from now on due to the growing scarcity of petroleum, and to make easier the recycling of all nutrients. The alternative of continuing to mine nutrients from the soil and dump most of them in landfill up to hundreds of kilometres away cannot be sustainable. The fertilisers currently used to partially replace lost nutrients are either finite resources or are manufactured unsustainably using finite and limited fossil fuels. Moreover, their use, in conjunction with the use of pesticides, tends make soil sterile and lifeless as Jenny Hume is, no doubt, aware.

Some links which may be of interest include: Working the land - or not of 24 Jun 08 by Jenny Hume on Web Diary, Who owns your sewage? of 3 Jul 08 by Valerie Yule on Online Opinion, Last gasp for single desk marketing of Australian wheat of 17 Jun 08, Peak oil prices cause South Australian Farmers to call for 'fair market forces' of 10 Jun 08, Orwellian Waterworks: big-agribusiness and Victorian Gov of 27 May 08, Insight program's take on Labor Shortage of 17 Jun 08, A 10,000 year misunderstanding of 1 May 08 by Canadian soil microbiologist Peter Salonius, I will govern for all Victorians (caveat: but only if you are powerful and connected) of 26 Jun 08.

The Australian Government is set to pass laws ending the single desk marketing of Australian wheat this week.

As reported by nineMSN, farmers have gathered in Canberra to protest the change. Wheat Growers Action Group chairman Peter Cannon, who helped organise the day of protests, said farmers were being dudded by the changes and wanted the public to know about it.

Wheat Export Market Alliance chairman Graham Blight also told the rally that growers' democratic rights were being ignored.

Without a single desk, "the weakest seller will determine the market", he said.

"The multinationals will come in and have a field day ... our government's given them a blank sheet".

Critics of single desk marketing have used the AWB/Iraq 'scandal' and one particularly heavy loss by Board to justify throwing out the whole single desk system. The opportunistic timing and predatory nature of their push for de-regulation is similar to the Disaster Capitalism modus operandi described by Naomi Klein in her book 'Shock Doctrine'.

The system preferred by many of these critics is - surprise, surprise - a free-market open-slather arrangement where the price of wheat can effectively be bid down to the lowest common denominator by the buyers. The buyers, in this case, would be the same sorts of multinational agri-business conglomerates that are lining up to market Australian wheat once the single desk is gone.

Not surprisingly, both Liberal (in the dubious form of Wilson Tuckey) and Labor (new Minister for Agriculture, Tony Burke) fully support the changes. Both operate in the mind-space of free-market economics, where any Government 'meddling' with the purity of the market is considered heretical.

Even when it helps Australian wheat farmers.

If there are problems with the way that AWB's been run, fix the problem. Don't change a structure that's served Australian wheatgrowers well for decades.