ABC bias

Update, 28 Sep: More lies from your ABC. The title of an ABC story, published on 25 S

The classic test for editorial/journalistic bias is whether the news agency/agent interviewed both sides.  In the Ukraine-Russia situation the Australian media has almost never interviewed the other side.  Other tests include whether journalists make statements without giving examples, or personalise their attacks. Most Australian media also fails this test.

The Australian ABC has repeatedly reported on the expulsion of two Australian journalists from China this week, and the torture and disappearance of Chinese journalists. Yet it has said nothing about our own Julian Assange, who currently faces a rigged trial, accused of breaking the laws of a country he has never entered, whilst held in prison in a country which has ignored his refugee status and tolerates US use of information obtained illegally through spying. British journalist, Afshin Rattansi, is an exception in the anglosphere media world in his continued efforts (see video below) to show the world how Britain, Australia, and the United States, are treating the man who exposed US war-crimes.

This episode of Going Underground, begins with a montage of some of its most prominent guests who have come out in support of Wikileaks Founder Julian Assange, who now faces his US extradition trial, including Noam Chomsky, John Pilger, Oliver Stone, Roger Waters, Slavoj Zizek, Benjamin Zephaniah and many more. Next, Going Underground’s Social Media Producer Farhaan Ahmed heads down to the Old Bailey where Julian Assange is facing his US extradition trial and speaks to Wikileaks Editor-in-Chief Kristinn Hrafnsson, legendary journalist and filmmaker John Pilger and fashion icon Vivienne Westwood who all attended the pro-Assange protests outside the court. Finally, Going Underground speaks to Dr. Yusef Salaam, one of the Central Park 5, who were wrongfully convicted of the rape and assault of a white female jogger in Manhattan’s Central Park. He discusses what it was like to serve out his sentence in a supermax prison, despite knowing he was innocent, the racist overtones of the media and criminal justice system that wrongfully prosecuted him and 4 others, the intervention of Donald Trump and Pat Buchanan in the case calling for their deaths, the Black Lives Matter (BLM) uprising in the United States and what this means for the police, criminal justice system and the racist history of the United States and much more!

Daniel Ziffer's journalistic effort for the ABC Saturday May 9th, "Calls to cut immigration often ignore Australia's economic and social reality," was sparked off by Shadow Minister for Immigration and Home Affairs, Senator Kristina Keneally's week old article, calling for a review of the numbers of skilled temporary workers. The purpose of the review she was calling for was to give Australians who have lost their jobs due to coronavirus lock-down, first preference in the job market when "normality" returns. This mild and reasonable suggestion has met with a frenzy of opposing articles in the mainstream media, and this ABC concoction is yet another of these.

In summary, the article is making the points that our social reality is multi-ethnic, as indicated in a photograph; and that senator Keneally, because she is an immigrant, has no moral right to suggest lowering the numbers of skilled temporary overseas workers following the Covid 19 crisis. Ziffer wrote (in the article) that Australia's important money-earners include "opportunity and growth". He uses the example of a successful migrant who is making money from population growth, which in turn is meant to illustrate the need for ongoing immigration and population growth (!).

Ziffer also notes that GDP per capita is actually falling, wages are "stagnant", and that people feel they are going backwards. Yet he later says that "We've become vastly rich — economically as well as a society — because of our diverse make-up." (!) Which is it? Are we feeling left behind or are we vastly rich? Does it depend who we are?

His closing comments relate to his earlier criticism of Senator Keneally for having the temerity, as a migrant, to make a public statement on immigration settings, even though she is the Opposition spokesperson on Immigration and Home Affairs!

He finishes up lurching to the extreme of calling this, "closing the door" to immigration (which was not suggested by Ms Keneally nor any other published commentator in the news this week), saying this cannot be done, because it would mean all of us - apart from the just over 3% of us who are of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander heritage - would be denying our ancestors, since they were all migrants.

So, from the Ziffer perspective, Australia is locked into perpetual immigration, at a rate that cannot be questioned, by those who live here, those who come here, and even by the the Shadow Minster for Immigration and Home Affairs!

Why, once again, does the ABC avoid the issue of population growth, the primary cause of housing affordability. It is simply a fantasy to believe that adding another 400,000 people to Australia's population every year is not relevant

What follows is the text of a complaint lodged with the Australian ABC regarding the bias in its reporting on housing in a series of segments on the 7.30 report:-

“This week, the 7.30 Report included 4 segments on the above subject.

Once again, the ABC avoided the key issue like the plague.

It can be argued that housing affordability is Australia's greatest problem. Thousands of young couples in particular are having to save for years and years to accumulate a house deposit while prices skyrocket. This puts relationships under strain, and means that they often have to put off having families until they are well into their 30s, while often having to pay back a large HECS debt, and repay large mortgage instalments at the same time.

And it is not only young people who are affected. There are many older women who are caught in a rental trap.And don't get me started on the desperately bad housing conditions being experienced by our indigenous folk.

None of your "contributors" to the segments offered any real solutions, apart from densification, which many people do not want in their neighborhoods
.
So why, once again, does the ABC avoid the issue of population growth, the primary cause of this problem. It is simply a fantasy to believe that adding another 400,000 people to Australia's population every year is not relevant.

The answer to the problem is to reign in this insane population growth. This is easily done by big cuts to immigration, and encouragement of small families.

This is not the first time I have raised this matter with you. Why do you avoid it. I refuse to believe that ABC researchers are not aware of the problem. It seems clear to me your reluctance to discuss population growth is idealogical, or perhaps you are frightened of being labelled racist. Proposing to cut immigration is not racist unless the proposer is advocating cutting immigration of particular races.

I have 3 children and six grandchildren. Two of my children have managed to break into the housing market, but the housing opportunities for the other seven are very uncertain, and a cause of worry for them as they enter into relationships and try and get on with their lives.

I am very angry that my family members are having to worry about getting a roof over their heads. My anger is made worse by the stupidity and ignorance of the political parties who will not acknowledge the problem. And of course, the ABC is aiding and abetting them by refusing to discuss the issue.

I have noted this week the saturation coverage the ABC has given to the so called sports rorts affair. Yes, that is a case of seriously bad behaviour by the Government, but it pales into insignificance compared to the pressure put on many Australians in obtaining housing. So why does the primary cause not get more attention.

ABC people, you are not doing your job. Your people have been whining in recent times about freedom of the press in particular having a good old bitch about AFP raids on the ABC offices. Well do not expect any sympathy from me. You are guilty of keeping relevant information from the public. It cuts both ways you know. Keep your bloody ideaology to yourselves, and start reporting/ commenting on ALL relevant facts, not just the bits that suit you.

PS And while you are at it, you might like to comment on the fact that the housing affordability issue is worsened by the fact that many Australians own multiple properties. I believe there are 20,000 Australians who own 6 or more investment properties, including many of our politicians. At one stage Barry O’Sullivan, a Nationals MP, owned 50. What about reporting on whether this is having an effect on housing affordability (or are you frightened the Government might cut your budget if you do). It is clearly a serious question as to whether ownership of residential property in particular should be controlled to ensure that house ownership is shared equitably by all Australians.

Bob Couch

cc Ita Buttrose, Nicolle Flint, Minister of Communications”

On the nights of February 11, 12 and 13, 2020, the ABC has shown three related 15 minute pieces in its 7.30 Reports, on the subject of housing. These segments have stressed the cost of housing and the gulf that exists between those who are able to afford or who own their house, comparing the situation of people who cannot afford a house, and who are thus obliged to rent. These programs have, however, completely failed to talk about Australia's extremely rapid population growth, which now requires the construction of the equivalent of a Canberra every year, [corrected 15.2.20] just to preserve the ratio of housing supply to housing demand. Most flagrant omission of all, the ABC says nothing at all about the fact that this is intentional government policy. We publish a letter of complaint which was sent to the ABC on this matter.

Complaint to the ABC about its unfair and prejudicial reporting on population and housing affordability

I am one of the Renter underclass. The 7.30 series that you ran this week was biased and extremely cruel to someone like myself. I pay higher than average rent so am luckier than those lower down on the income spectrum, although I live extremely frugally. The problem is that because I don't yet have a deposit for a home loan, which I could easily be paying off instead of rent I am locked out of the property market while filling the pockets of my wealthy overseas landlord. Due to my mature age I may never have secure housing and the risk of homelessness is a glaring reality for me. You did not mention overpopulation as one of the major causes of high property prices. I'm not surprised because the ABC, as far as I can see, has a policy of never uttering the O word. Secondly why is it fair that someone who already has a home can be helped by the government to build their private wealth while those of us in the underclass are hindered from attaining housing security and endure every privation that accompanies that situation?

The property developers build housing and make sure that the government allows hundreds of thousands of non humanitarian immigrants in each year so that property prices don't fall. Furthermore one of your guests accused certain people of nimbyism. That is unjust. Many people who oppose overdevelopment and the environmental and social damage that it causes oppose overdevelopment everywhere. Another of your guests said that high rise buildings are the answer to more affordable housing because they are more environmentally friendly due to their smaller foot print and they are better socially. Wrong, high rise buildings are more energy intensive and damage the environment. Socially, they generally isolate residents from one another. The ABC needs to be more balanced in it's reporting because the consequence of being narrow in who you represent allows injustices to continue. Talking about overpopulation is not racist as is explained in Katherine Betts' book "The Great Divide".

B. Wildered (Not real name.)

Some of you may have heard a segment in 'Blueprint for Living' program last Saturday which dealt with water (identified as a finite resource) and in which population growth was mentioned but then went on to discuss several technical solutions and the economics of selling rural/agricultural water to cities where it could command a higher price. The issue of increased demand being within government control through limiting immigration was not discussed. As we have come to expect from the ABC, population growth was a given, an immutable fact. Accordingly I have made a complaint to the ABC as follows:

Complaint

The segment complained about concerns [over] water supply. Jonathan Green interviewed Erin O'Donnell and Chris Chesterfield. While a growing population was identified along with water being a finite resource the program then dealt exclusively with technological 'solutions' to increasing demand and probably a worsening situation due to climate change).

Population growth is a policy direction for all our political parties. It is a deliberate political decision in which over 60% of population growth is due to very high immigration. Australia has one of the driest climates and one which is very likely to become drier. Water, a finite resource, is likely to become more limited even while government, opposition and The Greens pursue a policy which gives Australia one of the highest rates of population growth among OECD countries. But your program nowhere suggested that one of the directions that Australia could pursue in managing future water demand is to cut its immigration program and limit those policies which encourage Australians to have children. This is not to 'blame' migrants in any way for Australia's water problems; it is to blame the policy of high population growth pursued by our political parties. Prior to the last few years of the Howard Government Australia's immigration program was a great deal smaller. Returning to this smaller intake would help relieve not just a serious water shortage but a number of other infrastructure deficiencies as well.

I recently complained about a 'Breakfast' program dealing with water in which the interviewee mentioned population growth several times but in which Fran never took up the issue or discussed it.

Many of my colleagues join me in a view that the ABC has a persistent and pervasive bias against dealing with the issue of population growth as population growth relates to so many everyday issues. It is not sufficient to run an occasional program on population; population growth pervades so much of Australia's current life and future that it should also pervade the ABC programs which deal with a wide variety of important issues."

You can listen to the ABC program and write your own complaint. See the last line in my complaint and see why the latter is important.

The letter writer suggests that the ABC should publish on its website complaints and its responses so that anyone can see them. This would help to ensure transparency and would allow the public to judge whether the ABC exhibits bias on particular issues. (The letter writer also claims that the ABC shows consistent bias in dealing with Australia's policy of rapid population growth.)

Ms Ita Buttrose
Chair, ABC Board
Dear Ms Buttrose

Congratulations on your appointment. I wish you well in performing the duties of this important and complex job.

I hesitate to impinge on your time as I am sure you will be extremely busy in your new role but it is about a matter that I believe is important, and , in my opinion, has a simple, easily implemented, inexpensive answer that at least partly addresses the problem.

A little background. I am a 76 years old semi retired former public servant. I am an advocate for zero population growth. I am a member of Sustainable Population Australia (a national non political body) and the co founder and Convenor of the 350 member Stop Population Growth Now Party (registered to contest elections in SA). I have contested elections in SA on 3 occasions.

I listen to and watch the ABC a lot. My radio is tuned to ABC News Radio most of each day, and I am a consistent watcher of the Drum, ABC News, 7.30 Report, and Q and A. My favourite show is UTOPIA.

Regrettably, I have formed the view that the ABC is biased in a number of areas. In particular, I have found it necessary on a number of occasions to lodge complaints regarding the treatment of population policy on certain programs. For example, there was a recent discussion on housing affordability on the DRUM. The population of Australia increases by nearly 400,000 per annum, and yet this absolutely fundamental factor in housing affordability was barely referred to. I will not take your time by listing all the complaints I have made – you can no doubt request details
from ABC records, but I need to advise I have never been properly satisfied by the responses I have received. Indeed, ABC responses are characterized by reluctance to address the fundamental issue.

It interests me that all ABC programs are so consistent in barely mentioning population in discussing the problems that face this nation. There is constant debate about lack of infrastructure in Australia. The ABC can be depended on to bring up factors such as lack of finance etc but population pressures get little mention. Yet, the fact is that significant reductions in our population growth will have major benefits to Australians.

May I suggest a small way this situation can be improved. I suggest that, with the agreement of the complainant, the complaint, and the ABC’s response be published on the ABC’s website. This would help to ensure transparency and would allow the public to judge whether the ABC exhibits bias on particular issues.

I hope you find this suggestion useful.

Sincerely
Robert (Bob) Couch

A recent interview of the Prime Minister by Leigh Sales in the 7.30 Report on Tuesday 29 January 2019 provided a good illustration of the lack of understanding of economics by ABC journos or their deliberate and calculated rejection of some simple truths. John Coulter has written to Leigh Sales as follows.

Dear Leigh,

Last evening in your interview with the Prime Minister you raised the issue of government debt. You suggested to Morrison that he was not really such a good economic manager because government 'debt' had increased on his watch and you allowed the PM to go on and claim that he had to pay back the debt that Labor had created. This part of the interview was initiated by you and predicated on the undesirability of government debt.

What you should have asked Morrison, 'to whom is government debt owed' for it is actually owed to itself and is not a matter of concern as long as certain conditions are met. You may then have gone on and asked whether 'if the government does achieve a surplus is this not likely to lead to an economic downturn?' A government surplus means that the government is taking more from the economy and there is less for private investment.

Nearly all the ABC interviewers are firmly embedded in the existing economic paradigm which regards endless growth of GDP as both desirable and necessary whereas it is one of the fundamental drivers of our environmental degradation and not actually leading to improvements in human welfare.

With best wishes,
John Coulter, former leader, Australian Democrats

Transcript of the actual interview

Economic experts have warned the Government faces a challenge in meeting its new jobs target if it restricts migration, and even if it does deliver on its pledge, Australians may not be the ones to benefit.

It follows a similar pledge by Tony Abbott prior to the 2013 election to create 1 million jobs by 2018.

Peter McDonald, Emeritus Professor of Demography at ANU’s Crawford School of Public Policy, said it was an “achievable” target and that a recent projection of labour market demand by Victoria University had already earmarked a similar level of demand.

But he also noted migration was the largest contributor to the growth in employment numbers in Australia since 2013, ahead of the growing trend for older Australians to stay in work.

The permanent migration program was reduced from around 190,000 to just above 160,000 in the past two years.

Mr Morrison revealed last year it’s likely the intake would remain at this new, lower level.

Deloitte Access Economics partner Chris Richardson said his firm forecasted that, at this stage, jobs growth would fall short of the Government’s 2023 target.

“You get, basically, growth in jobs pretty much anyway — over time, there are more Australians, that typically means more jobs, but it does get more complicated than that,” Mr Richardson said.

“An ageing population means more people are retiring, that makes it harder.

“The migration debate — if it means winding back the number of migrants — that also makes it harder.”

The Department of Jobs’ Employment Outlook, released last year, projects employment to increase by 886,100 over the five years to May 2023.

Mr Richardson said the ratio of new skilled adult migrants to jobs growth was “pretty much one to one”, despite community concerns over migration fuelled by “barbecue logic”.

“People think, ‘well if migrants arrive, surely they’re taking jobs and if other things are equal, that means less jobs for everyone else’,” he said.

“If somebody puts up a hand to take a job — a migrant, a married woman, a Martian — they get the job, they earn the income, spend the income, then create the next job.”

Professor McDonald said if the Government restricted permanent migration, the employees needed by Australian businesses would not come from the ranks of the local unemployed.

“If labour demand is strong, and permanent migration is not filling the demand, then it will come from temporary migration or New Zealanders,” he said.

A reduction in immigration, he argues, would not necessarily lead to more jobs for Australians.

Dear 7.30.
The statements being made by politicians and commentators re the size and growth of the population/immigration intake are (deliberately) ignorant, seriously uninformed or deliberately politically biased. And the coverage of this issue by your program and ABC journalists more generally also lack quality research, lack of 'joining the dots', failure to question unfounded claims by the above and, in some cases, unquestioned acceptance and repeat of demonstrably untrue statements.
Please consider the following demonstrable facts and follow the inevitable conclusion.

Infrastructure, including, schools, hospitals, police stations, utilities for water and electricity, roads etc. do not last forever. It's estimated that across the broad sweep of all infrastructure, infrastructure has a life of ~50 years. Thus 2% of the total capital value of all infrastructure must be spent every year just to maintain but not to improve infrastructure for the existing population.

Recently, largely due to high immigration intakes, our population has been growing at 1.6% pa. Not long ago the rate was as high as 2%. But at 1.6% this means that 3.6% of the total capital value of all infrastructure must be spent each and every year just to maintain the level of service; that is an 80% increase in the cost of infrastructure just to maintain the same level of service.

This cost is not only ignored when it is claimed that high immigration is economically beneficial, the error is massively compounded and used to mislead by the way in which GDP is used as the criterion of economic benefit. The additional cost of the required 80% increase in infrastructure is added to GDP not subtracted. This is a function of the way GDP is calculated. It adds together all the dollars spent on goods and services whether the 'goods' are 'goods' or 'bads'. This money spent on expanding infrastructure cannot be spent on other things to improve real welfare for the existing population. Everyone seems to agree that the infrastructure required by the deliberately expanded population (through the Federal Government's immigration policy) should be built before the new intake arrives. Witness the very loud and universal applause on your QandA program when this point was made. Thus the burden falls on the existing population one way or another. If the infrastructure is not built before the new intake arrives, existing citizens suffer a decline in service, if it is built before the new intake arrives it is the existing citizens who pick up the cost. This is consistent with several Productivity Commission reports that it is not the existing population that benefits but the migrants.

Nor does the dishonesty over claimed economic benefits of high immigration stop there. As populations increase and cities expand most ordinary citizens bear increased costs: car maintenance, travel distances, petrol etc. These are real costs borne by these citizens but they add, yes add to GDP. It is this failure of GDP to measure, but to be used by many, including ABC journalists, to be a surrogate measure of quality of life that is used to mislead.

Another related matter poorly presented by the ABC. The Premier of S.A. is calling for an increase in migration to South Australia, again claiming economic benefit, yet at the same time hospital services have broken down badly: ambulances are banking up at emergency departments (ramping) and nurses and doctors are bitterly complaining about inadequate facilities to serve their patients. There are 4,794 public hospital beds in South Australia. If our population is to grow by 1.6% per year we would need an additional 77 beds this year and an exponentially increasing number in following years as populations became larger. Against this 77 extra beds the Marshall Government has pointed with some pride at reopening 20 beds in the old Repat Hospital. The hospital problem is clearly related to the issue of high population growth rate but journalists are not making the connection.

This is not in any way to blame migrants for these problems. It is the Federal Government that is responsible for the migration program, not the migrants. Nor is the above any reflection on the composition, religious background, sex or sexual orientation of migrants. This is simply about numbers and the failure of most media including the ABC and your program to do some simple maths and join the dots.
Yours sincerely,
John Coulter

The latest film clip by Dr Liz Allen via the ABC explains why we apparently shouldn't be worrying about Australia's population size, because the real issue is in fact social inequality. But what Dr Allen is doing here is creating a false dichotomy. In doing so she is attempting to channel all discussion on what is actually a highly nuanced issue into one where those involved are forced to pick a side.

In reality we can play a major role in reducing inequality at a global level by providing universal access to education, family planning and healthcare. That is, of course, what many people who care about the issue of population, advocate for, because this is the most effective and least coercive way to enable populations to stabilise over time.

In Australia rapid population growth is compounding social inequality, as it is a catalyst for urban sprawl and the over-priced, poor standard high-density development that is springing up across our conurbations. This has the impact of both gentrifying and slumifying communities at the same time and, in turn, it has the knock-on effect of pushing people on lower incomes out to the increased social isolation of the urban fringe.

Life on the urban fringe has huge ramifications in terms of social inequality and this translates into increased reliance on driving, a lack of walkability, a lack of access to non-human nature and major difficulties in services and infrastructure keeping up with demand.

The environmental impact of urban sprawl is also significant and as the sprawl increases, so does our average per capita carbon footprint (and this challenges another false dichotomy).

As we are experiencing a climate emergency, anything that adds to the problem of climate change will have huge ramifications for those who are living in poverty because they will be the first in the firing line.

The environmental impact that medium to long-term rapid population growth is having, and will continue to have, is significant, especially at a time when we need to be tackling this emergency head on. This is why the education and empowerment of women (and men), as well as access to family planning, plays such a major role in climate expert, Paul Hawken's seminal book, 'Project Drawdown'.

Therefore, continuing to rapidly grow Australia's population to suit our GDP driven ponzi economic system makes no environmental or social sense, especially in face of the enormous challenges that the world is facing.

Dr Allen also perpetuates the myth that we must grow in order to counteract an ageing population. This has been disproved so many times and much has been written on this topic. For any population to stabilise, it is inevitable that there will eventually be a larger than normal cohort of older people (for a while). This is not something that we need to be scared of. Delaying the ageing population issue by a few generations will only exacerbate the challenge further down the track.

While we need to seize the opportunity to allow our domestic population to start to stabilise, an effective way of tackling population growth at a global level is through a system of mutual aid, where we share knowledge and expertise with as many different cultures as possible.

This mutual aid will not only help to provide access to education and medical services where they are needed, it will also help countries such as Australia to lower their per-capita emissions through learning resilient methods of land management and climate specific architecture.

Of course migration wouldn't have to end but it would be driven by a different paradigm; one that understands that we need to work to non coercively stabilise populations both at a global and at a local level in tandem with a much greater emphasis on retrofitting our existing built stock.

In short, the time has come to have an ongoing discussion about population; one that understands that it is complex and that it intersects with a whole range of hugely significant issues.

Mark Allen is an ex town planner and is the cofounder of Population Permaculture & Planning and Holistic Activism & Behaviour Change.

ABC 7.30 Report last night aired part one of its three-part population special, which included me as the economist. While I will reserve judgement until the final two-parts have been aired, my initial gut reaction is disappointment. The main problem I see with it so far is the ABC has inferred that a population of more than 40-million mid-century is inevitable rather than a direct policy choice. Nowhere did The ABC clearly show how the federal government massively increased Australia’s immigration intake from the early-2000

By Leith van Onselen

ABC 7.30 Report last night aired part one of its three-part population special, which included me as the economist.

While I will reserve judgement until the final two-parts have been aired, my initial gut reaction is disappointing.

The main problem I see with it so far is the ABC has inferred that a population of more than 40-million mid-century is inevitable rather than a direct policy choice.

Nowhere did The ABC clearly show how the federal government massively increased Australia’s immigration intake from the early-2000s:

Nor how immigration is the defacto driver of Australia’s population increase – both directly as migrants step off the plane, as well as indirectly when they have children (then counted as ‘natural increase’). This was made explicit by the Productivity Commission’s 2016 Migrant Intake Australia report, which showed that Australia’s population would barely increase without immigration:

While the segment at least didn’t include spruiker ‘demographers’ like Liz Allen or Peter McDonald, it instead replaced them with another cookie-cutter demographer from ANU. One wonders why Bob Birrell wasn’t contacted, who has been a strong critique of Australia’s ‘Big Australia’ Program:

Finally, the spokesperson for Infrastructure Australia (IA) claimed that “population growth is an opportunity” – conveniently ignoring that IA has issued several recent stark warnings about infrastructure failing to keep pace with population growth, as well as ignoring IA’s own recent projections showing that living standards in both Sydney and Melbourne will be crushed as their populations surge to 7.4 million and 7.3 million by 2046:

Again, while I will reserve judgement until the final two parts are aired, I am not hopeful that The ABC will analyse this issue correctly and actually inform debate.

[email protected]

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

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

Growth lobbyists outnumbered environment and democracy proponents three to two on Last Monday's Q and A on ABC 1, with Jane Fitzgerald (Property Council of Australia), Jonathan Daley (Grattan Institute) and Dr Jay Song (Immigration professional who arrived here two years ago) and Tony Jones (Compere) vs Tim Flannery (Population scientist and author of the famous Future Eaters) and Bob Carr, (journalist, environmentalist, and former Premier of New South Wales). The show started with a brilliant question from audience member, Matthew Bryan. He read it off his mobile phone, with a steely emotional intensity that only someone blinded by dollar values could have ignored, and all the growthists did, of course. Nonetheless since the ABC almost never invites representatives of the non-growth side, we could call this an improvement. Read on for a commentary on some of the highlights and lowlights of this historic confrontation between truth and lies and ignorance.

Most egregious in argument technique and substance was Dr Jay Song, described as an 'Immigration Expert'. Property Council of Australia's Jane Fitzgerald seemed to know enough to underplay the almost absolute power of the Property Council of Australia, which is on the way to running and ruining this country. Grattan Institute representative Jonathan Daley urbanely projected a dispassionate acceptance of growth as a given, and significant expertise in growth cliches.

Tim Flannery waved his hand like a man drowning at sea, yet often failed to get the attention of the moderator who seemed unaccountably fascinated by Dr Jay Song.

Water and the NBN

Flannery's suggestions for democratic decisions and common sense about Australia's vital resource poverty may have been overly sophisticated for the growthists and the commentator, who seemed unaware of the fact that we are 30% desert, 30% rangeland and only 4% truly fertile land. On the other hand, maybe they understand, but just didn't want to discuss anything real. Tony Jones actually implied that lack of water could be overcome by the rolling out of the NBN. Will we ever know if he was joking or serious?

TIM FLANNERY
Look, the history of Australia has been really telling in that regard because we have seen a relative shrinkage of many of those inland cities. And I think the reason is that the resource base is just so limited. So, even the agricultural resource base in many of those areas, even our rich irrigation areas, is really small compared with the resource base over much of North America or Europe or East Asia. There’s just...it’s really hard to marshal enough resources – even with education as being one of those things – and mass to break through. And, yet, in Melbourne and Sydney, we’re part of a global community, really. A lot of our wealth comes from that international trade. Once you get into real Australia, outside that, the...

TONY JONES
Well, if the NBN is in those places, anyone can do anything, can’t they?

(LAUGHTER)

The Aging population furphy

Bob Car similarly, despite performing like an agile intellectual seal in his home element, about to nail his position to perfection, had whole sentences clipped off, with Tony Jones abruptly seeking Miss Song's opinion, which came out like a word-salad, bearing no relationship to the question. Is Dr Song a professional filibusterer? She has a long, diverse, academic record, so, although Australian university standards are plummeting, it seems to me that, either they have collapsed completely or her job on the panel was expressly to confuse.

BOB CARR
Yeah, that’s the argument about the ageing of the population. The truth is, the age profile of the migrant intake ain’t that much different from that of your existing population. As one demographer said, you would have to run immigration at very high levels – higher than we’ve got now – and for a very long time to make a significant difference to a factor that’s touching every country in the world.

TONY JONES
Bob, I’m not sure that everyone in this panel will agree with that point. I’m just going to go to Jay Song.

BOB CARR
Let me just... Let me just...

TONY JONES
I just want to pick you up on that point first.

BOB CARR
Just another sentence.

TONY JONES
I’ll come back to you.

(LAUGHTER)

BOB CARR
OK. I’ll hold you to that.

TONY JONES
Alright, I’ll come back to you. But is that correct? I mean, looking at the migration intake, I would have thought it skews young.

Dr JAY SONG
I mean, Australia has done a fantastic policy on migration management. I mean, it’s a very well-designed policy and also a well-managed one, ‘cause it’s targeting the skills and the qualifications they have, and then they choose very carefully who can contribute, who can come here and contribute to the economy. Not just the economy, but also the social capital they’re bringing from their home towns, and also the connection they are making between Australia and the country of origin they are originally coming from.

And these migrants are chosen... First of all, you need to have skills and qualifications in the degrees or other technical capabilities. Second of all, you need to pass the character test. So there is no security concern, national security concern. They are not a threat to national security. Third of all, they have to be healthy...and employable, and they also come here and pay huge tax. And the average income among these skilled migrants is actually $5,000 more than the average Australian taxpayer. And lastly, they also make efforts to be integrated into Australian society, because they value the same democracy, equal opportunity, and also the concern for environmental protection and, yeah, diversity.

It was somewhat disappointing that Bob Carr, who so expertly conveyed his message and argued his position, only advocated a political solution of halving the immigration program.

BOB CARR: Do we really want to be adding 1 million to our population every 3.5 years? Would it be such a departure from God’s eternal plan for this continent if we took six years about acquiring an extra million?

In light of the absolute democratic breakdown and planning and environment chaos that came though clearly, it made more sense to argue for zero net.

The whole thing started with a brilliant question from audience member, Matthew Bryan. He read it off his mobile phone, with a steely emotional intensity that only someone blinded by dollar values could have ignored, and all the growthists did, of course. Meanwhile, for many watching their screens, he was a hero, as he conveyed their message to those who have declared war on Australia, using bulldozers instead of guns.

Do the growthists understand how angry we are?

MATTHEW BRYAN
We’ve seen a sharp decline in our living standards in the past five to 10 years. Unaffordable housing, overdevelopment, low wage growth, increase in traffic congestion and pollution, and overcrowded schools, hospitals and public transport are now part of life in Sydney and Melbourne, and our other cities will soon be the same. Australians aren’t stupid. They realise that the root cause is our rapid population growth driven by the highest immigration rate in the developed world, currently at over 200,000 per year, and that the main advocates of this unsustainable immigration are corporate and political elites who love being able to boost their profits and brag about GDP growth via an ever-increasing consumer base. Do you think our politicians understand how angry Australians are about our mass immigration program?

In response, Bob Carr appropriately cited the TAPRI "poll that shows 74% of Australians think there is enough of us already."

Jane Fitzgerald, Property Council of Australia, managed to make it sound as if the effects of immigration-induced rapid population growth were not related to immigration, suggesting that "Australians welcome migration, generally," but said she hoped that our political leaders were listening. Yes, they are listening - to the Property Council of Australia.

JANE FITZGERALD
I don’t know, Tony, if people are angry about migration, or if they’re angry because it takes a long time to get around the city and the transport... Getting around the city – a city like Sydney or Melbourne – is tough. I think Australians welcome migration, generally. Now, I’m not talking about population increases, necessarily, in that context, but I don’t know if the anger is about migration. I do hope – I do hope – that our political leaders are listening, though, and I understand the frustration, as I said, if you’re struggling to get around your city...

Tim Flannery reflected the many years he has been debating and writing about Australia's undemocratic and unmanagable rate of population growth and the promises that have never been fulfilled.

TIM FLANNERY, CHIEF COUNCILLOR, CLIMATE COUNCIL
Look, Matthew, the problems you pointed to are not new problems. I have lived through government after government that’s promised to fix them with decentralisation, or new projects, or whatever – transport projects. It’s never happened, and I don’t think it will happen because the costs involved to keep up with this very rapid growth are large indeed.

Now, you asked, you know, “Are politicians...? Do they understand how angry people are?” There’s an underlying issue there, which is about, why has this problem occurred? And it’s because politicians, with very few exceptions, such as Bob, none of them want a smaller constituency. None of our church leaders want a smaller congregation. None of our businesses want to sell fewer things. So, unless we, the people, speak up on this, and are heard, and control the agenda, special interest groups will see population growth continue.

Jones then zoomed over to Jay Song who went onto seemingly automatic pilot in a ramble of cliches about what immigrants bring to Australia, and emphasizing the high quality of these immigrants as ensured by strict testing, with an additional plus being that they earn more than Australians!

She then added irrelevant and hard to substantiate claims that immigrants value democracy, equal opportunity, environmental protection [which is poor and deteriorating in Australia as it sacrifices habitat for people] lastly adding "yeah, diversity," presumably referring to human cultural linguistic , religious, racial, rather than ecological. She threw in the "You can't stop them coming," argument, which Tim Flannery would later answer and which would be Bob Carr's last word. She also sounded very much as if she was attempting to summon up Pauline Hanson as a strawman responsible for [74% of Australians being jack of the immigration tsunami]: "I think there is some responsibility, some part on the politicians’ side. I think they’re creating some fearmongering and finger-pointing – the migrant as a problem." Fortunately she did not get away with it.

Dr JAY SONG, MIGRATION POLICY EXPERT
Yeah, Matthew, I mean, I understand your concerns. I’m not sure whether Australians are angry about the incoming migration. Like myself, I’m one of those recent immigrants. I came to Australia two years ago as a temporary 457 skilled migration, um, skilled migrant. But then I work with Australians. I respect the Australian values. It’s a mature democracy. I respect diversity, multiculturalism. The working environment is fantastic, so I decided to apply for permanent residency, and then I’ve got it six months ago. And I really appreciate, first of all, to be on this show as a migrant – a recent migrant – and I feel very fortunate and privileged to be on this show to contribute my thoughts and opinions and my expertise to the population debate, which is a very important conversation that Australia, as well as migrants, are all having.

Um, while population is growing – that’s the trend in the world – we can’t stop that from happening. It is something happening not just in Australia, but worldwide. We can’t stop people from coming. I understand the pressure on the infrastructure. I understand that there is a congestion issue, there is a housing affordability issue, and also the pressure on schools and hospitals. But I think the question is not about the number of migrants. When you look at the data, 60% of those permanent migrants are actually skilled migrants who are contributing to the economy and society and the diversity in the community. 30% of those permanent migration are family migrants, who are also contributing to building the families and strengthening the families. Only less than 10% of those permanent migration are humanitarian migrants.

I think there is some responsibility, some part on the politicians’ side. I think they’re creating some fearmongering and finger-pointing – the migrant as a problem. But I think, what we all, as Australian, also recent immigrants, permanent residents, we altogether... What Australians want is also what migrants want too. We don’t want the congested, you know, heavy traffic when we go to work. We also respect the clean environment, a sustainable environment, and we all want to grow together as a nation.

Bob Carr and Tony Jones vie for the last word

Here is Bob Carr's last word:

BOB CARR
If you say the test of our migrant policy is our obligation to the world, our moral obligation to the world that that is how we’ll run immigration, there’d be no limit. We’d certainly be saying we would take a million people a year.

Our obligation to the world is best expressed by us managing sustainably this vast and remarkable and beautiful continent we’ve got and making ourselves so prosperous that through our overseas development assistance program, we can be regarded as the most generous of the world’s wealthy countries. And not least by running an aid program with the most important feature in it being funding of family planning. Because that is the contribution that can make the most decisive difference in elevating a country out of the misery of mass poverty and on to the trajectory of becoming a middle-income nation.

But it was drawn out a little by Tony Jones:

TONY JONES
I don’t want quite want to end on a prophylactic effect. So, let me just ask a political question to you.

BOB CARR
You can’t run a program about population and not run that risk.

And Tony then tried to tar Bob Carr with the unfortunateTony Abbott brush, but Carr is a lot smarter than Tony:

TONY JONES
Just before we go out, Tony Abbott – and you seem to be on the same page with him on this – made the same case you are making, halving the migration policy, a couple of weeks ago. His Cabinet colleagues all jumped on him and silenced him quickly. What do you think is going on?

BOB CARR
You’re asking me to analyse Tony Abbott’s motivation in this?

TONY JONES
No, no, only since you agree with him on the migration?

BOB CARR
Well, he agrees with me.

(LAUGHTER)

BOB CARR
I’ve been saying this longer than him. Look, Tony, I rest my case with this proposition – we can achieve all the decent effects we want for ourselves and for others by running an immigration program just markedly less ambitious than it’s been, giving us time to recover, to get things right. Don’t shrug it off and say, “It’s all a matter of planning, it’s all a matter of infrastructure.” That’s too easy. That’s an easy way out. Let’s get it right by giving ourselves a bit of planning space, by just seeing that the level comes down appreciably. That’s the position that 74% of Australians have reached. And I think, on this, they’re absolutely right.

Full transcript below

TONY JONES
Good evening, and welcome to Q&A. I’m Tony Jones. Tonight’s Four Corners examined Australia’s booming population, but now we’d like to take that conversation further. To help us do that, nearly one-third of our audience tonight come from two critical areas of Western Sydney, both at the coalface of rapid development – Parramatta, which is destined to be Sydney’s second CBD, and Camden and Wilton, the sites of massive new housing developments.

Here to answer your questions, the head of the Climate Council, Tim Flannery, the CEO of the Grattan Institute, John Daley, migration policy expert from the University of Melbourne, Dr Jay Song, the executive director of the New South Wales Property Council, Jane Fitzgerald, and former foreign minister and New South Wales premier Bob Carr. Please welcome our panel.

(APPLAUSE)

TONY JONES
Thank you very much. Our first question tonight comes from Matthew Bryan.

MASS MIGRATION ANGER

MATTHEW BRYAN
We’ve seen a sharp decline in our living standards in the past five to 10 years. Unaffordable housing, overdevelopment, low wage growth, increase in traffic congestion and pollution, and overcrowded schools, hospitals and public transport are now part of life in Sydney and Melbourne, and our other cities will soon be the same. Australians aren’t stupid. They realise that the root cause is our rapid population growth driven by the highest immigration rate in the developed world, currently at over 200,000 per year, and that the main advocates of this unsustainable immigration are corporate and political elites who love being able to boost their profits and brag about GDP growth via an ever-increasing consumer base. Do you think our politicians understand how angry Australians are about our mass immigration program?

TONY JONES
Let’s start with one of the former political elites, Bob Carr.

BOB CARR, FORMER NSW PREMIER
Well, I’m interested that the first poll I’ve seen that indicates a big shift in public attitudes on this came out in recent months. It shows 74% of Australians think there is enough of us already, and as someone who’s been talking on ecological and economic grounds for less immigration rather than more, I find that interesting. It’s the first breakthrough.

And I think politicians and business leaders ought to be acknowledging that it has finally sunk in. I thought I was a lonely voice for a long time, but I think in recent... I would say in the last 12 months, the message has sunk in, and the key message is this – immigration is good.

We are a migrant nation. Our character derives from the fact that so many of us were born overseas. But would it be such a tragedy if, instead of adding 1 million to our population every 3.5 years, we took six years about it? Could we achieve the benefits of immigration with a more manageable annual intake?

TONY JONES
So, Bob, just to interrupt for a moment. Well, former political elite, that is former prime minister Tony Abbott, recently came out and asked for the migration intake to be cut in half. It sounds like you’re on song with him. Is that what you’re saying?

BOB CARR
Yeah, more or less. I would leave it to the experts to work out and to address the different categories. But I think... I think the majority of Australians, especially those who live in the big, stressed cities – Sydney and Melbourne receive 90% of the migrant intake – would be saying, “Just give us a bit more to absorb the increase.” Immigration is our character. 37% of the population of Sydney was born overseas. We’re proud of it. We celebrate it. But even those people – those born overseas – are still asking whether we can achieve the same benefits at a less dramatic pace.

It is the highest in the world. It is the highest in the world. Do we really want to be adding 1 million to our population every 3.5 years? Would it be such... Would it be such a departure from God’s eternal plan for this continent if we took six years about acquiring an extra million?

TONY JONES
Jane Fitzgerald?

JANE FITZGERALD, PROPERTY COUNCIL OF AUSTRALIA, NSW
I think the reality of the situation is that Australia has always grown. Every Commonwealth government, including the one that Bob was part of, has set this country on a trajectory for growth. Whether that growth is 0.6% or 1%, if we don’t plan for growth, we won’t solve the problems that are currently out there. So, I think we need to think about how we can do this collaboratively and constructively.

We need to think about how we learn the lessons of the past 20 years, where we’ve grown by 6 million already. And for all of the struggles that we face in a city like Sydney, or a city like Melbourne, they’re undoubtedly better cities than they were 20 years ago. Now, I’m not saying that that’s... it’s not a challenge catching the train that’s crowded. I do that every morning myself. But if we plan for and we deliver infrastructure in the way that we can confidently, then we will be OK. And if we believe that we’re not going to grow, we will only repeat the problems of the past 20 years.

TONY JONES
Jane, I’ll quickly bring you to the question that was asked there. Do you think our politicians understand how angry Australians are about our mass migration program? That was the question. Do you think there is anger out there? Do you think politicians get it, if that’s true?

JANE FITZGERALD
I don’t know, Tony, if people are angry about migration, or if they’re angry because it takes a long time to get around the city and the transport... Getting around the city – a city like Sydney or Melbourne – is tough. I think Australians welcome migration, generally. Now, I’m not talking about population increases, necessarily, in that context, but I don’t know if the anger is about migration. I do hope – I do hope – that our political leaders are listening, though, and I understand the frustration, as I said, if you’re struggling to get around your city...

TONY JONES
Jane, we’ll come to some specific questions on those issues in a minute. I’ll just pass around to the panel. Tim Flannery?

TIM FLANNERY, CHIEF COUNCILLOR, CLIMATE COUNCIL
Look, Matthew, the problems you pointed to are not new problems. I have lived through government after government that’s promised to fix them with decentralisation, or new projects, or whatever – transport projects. It’s never happened, and I don’t think it will happen because the costs involved to keep up with this very rapid growth are large indeed.

Now, you asked, you know, “Are politicians...? Do they understand how angry people are?” There’s an underlying issue there, which is about, why has this problem occurred? And it’s because politicians, with very few exceptions, such as Bob, none of them want a smaller constituency. None of our church leaders want a smaller congregation. None of our businesses want to sell fewer things. So, unless we, the people, speak up on this, and are heard, and control the agenda, special interest groups will see population growth continue.

TONY JONES
Jay Song?

Dr JAY SONG, MIGRATION POLICY EXPERT
Yeah, Matthew, I mean, I understand your concerns. I’m not sure whether Australians are angry about the incoming migration. Like myself, I’m one of those recent immigrants. I came to Australia two years ago as a temporary 457 skilled migration, um, skilled migrant. But then I work with Australians. I respect the Australian values. It’s a mature democracy. I respect diversity, multiculturalism. The working environment is fantastic, so I decided to apply for permanent residency, and then I’ve got it six months ago. And I really appreciate, first of all, to be on this show as a migrant – a recent migrant – and I feel very fortunate and privileged to be on this show to contribute my thoughts and opinions and my expertise to the population debate, which is a very important conversation that Australia, as well as migrants, are all having.

Um, while population is growing – that’s the trend in the world – we can’t stop that from happening. It is something happening not just in Australia, but worldwide. We can’t stop people from coming. I understand the pressure on the infrastructure. I understand that there is a congestion issue, there is a housing affordability issue, and also the pressure on schools and hospitals. But I think the question is not about the number of migrants. When you look at the data, 60% of those permanent migrants are actually skilled migrants who are contributing to the economy and society and the diversity in the community. 30% of those permanent migration are family migrants, who are also contributing to building the families and strengthening the families. Only less than 10% of those permanent migration are humanitarian migrants.

I think there is some responsibility, some part on the politicians’ side. I think they’re creating some fearmongering and finger-pointing – the migrant as a problem. But I think, what we all, as Australian, also recent immigrants, permanent residents, we altogether... What Australians want is also what migrants want too. We don’t want the congested, you know, heavy traffic when we go to work. We also respect the clean environment, a sustainable environment, and we all want to grow together as a nation.

TONY JONES
Jay, I’m going to interrupt there because we’re going to come to a lot of those issues as we go along. John Daley? And keep it reasonably tight, if you can.

JOHN DALEY, CEO, GRATTAN INSTITUTE
So, Matthew, I think, if you look at the numbers, it suggests that people are not putting migration as the top worries. But they are, for example, now citing housing affordability as the thing that they are second most concerned about, just after health. They’re clearly very concerned about congestion in traffic.

So, all of those things are, at least in part, the consequence of migration, but they are also the consequence of government policy on what we’ve done about planning or haven’t, what we’ve done about transport or haven’t. And so I think what people are reacting to is the effects. And I think what it does is that it illustrates that the key issue here is, in part, what number do we want for migration? But it’s also, and just as importantly, what policies do we put in place to deal with that growth? And if we’re not going to get those policies in place, how do we adjust migration given that?

TONY JONES
Very briefly, you’re talking about anger really generated by poor planning?

JOHN DALEY
Well, I think anger by the consequences of poor planning, which is that, essentially, houses are, and apartments are, much more expensive than they should be.

TONY JONES
OK. Let’s move to our next question from John McGregor. Go ahead.


MIGRATION/POP GROWTH

JOHN McGREGOR
Thank you. For some people, the perception is that strong population growth means strong economic growth, and therefore a big Australia is a strong Australia. The fears some people have is that any nation that decides to stabilise or even reduce its population is risking its economic resilience and vitality. My question is to those on the panel advocating population limits – how do you respond to the fears of those Australians who have concerns that their economic security is threatened by any move to stabilise or reduce Australia’s population?

TONY JONES
OK, Bob Carr, back to you.

BOB CARR
Well, I don’t know whether that is the accurate description of Australian public opinion. As I said, the poll shows that 74% of Australians think we don’t need more people. So, I’m... I mean, that’s where we... that’s where we’re starting with. We’re starting with a public concern about the notion that going on increasing our population every year and doing so at the most ambitious level of any developed country in the world is the right path forward.

But Australia’s going to have a secure and prosperous future, even if we were to run immigration at roughly half the level it is now. The markets of Asia are opening up for us. Whatever Trump does on protection, we’ve got free trade agreements with the nations that are producing the world’s biggest middle class. In South-East Asia, there will be a billion new middle-class consumers. In this era, having a big domestic market has got no advantage in the way it did for us back in the 1950s or the 1970s. The world is our market, and a smart, highly-educated, highly-skilled people – yes, a small population, in world terms – can be world-beaters given these conditions.

TONY JONES
Bob, your own former colleague, Lindsay Tanner, once the finance minister, says that Australia will struggle to pay for health, education, and all of the things that we’ve come to expect in this country without a larger population to help pay for it, especially with the huge ageing burden that we have.

BOB CARR
Yeah, that’s the argument about the ageing of the population. The truth is, the age profile of the migrant intake ain’t that much different from that of your existing population. As one demographer said, you would have to run immigration at very high levels – higher than we’ve got now – and for a very long time to make a significant difference to a factor that’s touching every country in the world.

TONY JONES
Bob, I’m not sure that everyone in this panel will agree with that point. I’m just going to go to Jay Song.

BOB CARR
Let me just... Let me just...

TONY JONES
I just want to pick you up on that point first.

BOB CARR
Just another sentence.

TONY JONES
I’ll come back to you.

(LAUGHTER)

BOB CARR
OK. I’ll hold you to that.

TONY JONES
Alright, I’ll come back to you. But is that correct? I mean, looking at the migration intake, I would have thought it skews young.

Dr JAY SONG
I mean, Australia has done a fantastic policy on migration management. I mean, it’s a very well-designed policy and also a well-managed one, ‘cause it’s targeting the skills and the qualifications they have, and then they choose very carefully who can contribute, who can come here and contribute to the economy. Not just the economy, but also the social capital they’re bringing from their home towns, and also the connection they are making between Australia and the country of origin they are originally coming from.

And these migrants are chosen... First of all, you need to have skills and qualifications in the degrees or other technical capabilities. Second of all, you need to pass the character test. So there is no security concern, national security concern. They are not a threat to national security. Third of all, they have to be healthy...and employable, and they also come here and pay huge tax. And the average income among these skilled migrants is actually $5,000 more than the average Australian taxpayer. And lastly, they also make efforts to be integrated into Australian society, because they value the same democracy, equal opportunity, and also the concern for environmental protection and, yeah, diversity.

JOHN DALEY
Tony, if I can add to that, we’ve actually had a big shift in our migration policy over the last decade. So, if you go back before about 2006, many of the migrants who came were older, and the age profile relative to the age profile of the population was not that different. But if you look at the last 10 years in particular, we have seen a substantial increase in the number of migrants, and they have been skewed very young. So, the vast majority have been under the age of 45. And that’s a big shift in...

TONY JONES
OK, let’s leave that point there so I can go back to Bob, because that’s... You said they were skewed old, and I believed the figures say they’re skewed young. So I just want to pick you up on that point. I think we’ve heard from John Daley that what you said was not correct.

BOB CARR
Yeah. No, the overall pattern is that migration can produce an age profile in the intake not that different from the existing population. So, you’ve got some relief in recent years, but before that, with dependents, and other considerations, it wasn’t that different. And the conclusion would be that if we... We simply can’t...

TONY JONES
He’s talking about the past 10 years...

BOB CARR
Yes, if I can put it this way...

TONY JONES
..in which we got six million more people.

BOB CARR
We can’t avoid the ageing of the population. No country in the world is going to avoid it. But just notice what has happened since 2000. People have adjusted their working lives and you’ve had a 2% increase in the participation in the workforce of people in their 60s and 70s. These matters are capable of resolving themselves without this weird experiment Australia is currently conducting in having an immigration intake greater than any other advanced country in the world, with a population growth that resembles that of a Third World country, of a developing country. This is peculiar. It’s unique to Australia. It’s producing enormous stress, especially in our two biggest cities, or our three biggest cities, and there are alternatives. In fact...

TONY JONES
Bob, I’m going to ask you to just pause some of your thoughts there...

BOB CARR
Sure.

TONY JONES
..because you’ll get a chance to answer more of that. And, Tim Flannery, the questioner actually put it to those who would rather see a smaller population, and you’re certainly one of those.

TIM FLANNERY
Well, John was asking about defence and comparative issues around security, national security, and, you know, Australia is going to be a small nation by Asian standards. I mean, you know, Indonesia, our nearest neighbour, will always be multiple times bigger than us. We have to cope with that sort of world. But it’s also important to realise that global population growth is slowing, yeah? And by the second half of the century, we hope it’ll be stabilised.

So, the whole world is going to be in this boat, of dealing with ageing, of dealing with all of the issues that come about with this. And I don’t see it as something exceptional for us. You know, the big questions for us, really, are what do we, as Australians, want? How big a population do we want? You know, how are we going to satisfy our security needs, given that we’ll always be small?

Dr JAY SONG
I agree with him. I mean, it’s not about the number or the rate of immigration. But I think what we really need to have as a discussion today is how we want to grow as a nation together.

TONY JONES
But the interesting thing is, we haven’t had that debate.

Dr JAY SONG
Exactly.

TONY JONES
Quite a long time ago, we had a debate, and now we find the population is going to be much, much bigger than we thought, but we haven’t had a debate. That’s why we’re here tonight, and actually we’ve got a lot of people in the audience who are at the cutting-edge of this debate. Let’s go to one of those now. Sue Johnson.


TRANSPORT BEFORE DEVELOPMENT

SUE JOHNSON
Thank you. If great urban design and sustainability comes from high-density living near railways with viable... Sorry, near transport with viable and reliable options for transport, and close proximity to employment and key services, what risks are there in applying population growth and high density into the peri-urban areas of metropolitan... of the greater metropolitan areas such as the Blue Mountains and Wollondilly? I’m asking this question in the context of the Wilton Priority Precinct, which aims to build a new city of 50,000 people with no access to public transport.

TONY JONES
Jane Fitzgerald, no access to public transport, yet we’re going to build an extra 50,000 people into this community. How does that work and how does that happen? How is it allowed to happen?

JANE FITZGERALD
Tony, I think the issues that Sue is raising are really important ones and I think the bottom line is we’ve got some choices here. Infrastructure Australia put out a report a couple of weeks ago, a week or so before John did with the Grattan report that came out, about how we want Sydney to grow in particular – do we want to keep sprawling, do we want to have more high density around railway lines and the type of things that you’re talking about, or do we want to try and share the load more equitably across the city.

I think the answer is that we need to share the growth across the city as much... as equitably as we possibly can. I think in areas like yours, there is some good news relating to things like the Western Sydney City Deal which was announced only last Sunday week, where, for the first time, Sue, what you’ve actually got are eight local governments, the state government, and the Commonwealth government – and I hasten to add, a bipartisan policy position at both Commonwealth and state level – where they’ve agreed to work together to try and plan that part of Western Sydney better than they have in the past. So, what that means...

TONY JONES
Can I just ask a question? Why do all the houses get built before the public transport is put in place?

(LAUGHTER)

TONY JONES
It’s pretty obvious...

JANE FITZGERALD
It’s a great question.

It’s a great question.

TONY JONES
Should there be rules to stop that from happening?

JANE FITZGERALD
Absolutely.

TONY JONES
I mean, you’re with the property developers.

JANE FITZGERALD
Absolutely. There should be rules.

TONY JONES
You’re talking on their behalf. So, shouldn’t they just say, “We’re not going to build there until you put a rail line”?

JANE FITZGERALD
It’s absolutely a no-brainer, and you’d think that we would have done it before now, but we haven’t done it that way in the past, and that’s all there is to it.

BOB CARR
It happens precisely when you run immigration at double the rate it ought to be run, because the infrastructure, the infrastructure struggles to keep up. And what government pours into infrastructure is adequate to cope with an existing population, but struggles to cope with the needs when it’s the highest rate of immigration in the developed world.

TONY JONES
But, Bob, I’m going to have to say this. You were premier for 10 years, ‘95 to 2005. Why didn’t you build a world-class railway system out to all these suburbs?

BOB CARR
Let me answer that question. Let me answer that question.

TONY JONES
A lot of people would like to hear the answer.

BOB CARR
Let me answer that question. I’m proud of the fact that according to a treasury assessment I received last week – because I asked a former head of state treasury to give it to me – that during my time as premier we increased capital work spending by the whole of government in the 10 years I was premier by a total of 40%. Now, that’s in real terms. And enabled some huge projects. And I will simply tweet to Q&A a list of them now so they go up and everyone can have access to them. It would have been impossible for any premier, not just this one, during 10 years to have increased capital works outlay by above 40% in real terms.

TONY JONES
Unless you were looking into the future. Because we’re always going to grow very fast.

BOB CARR
We were running at a pretty bold level, Tony. And we were criticised in the media not for spending too little, but we were criticised in the media because we were the last of the big spenders.

TONY JONES
Alright. Sorry about the retrospective critique. We’re going to move on to the present. Back to Jane.

BOB CARR
Can I just make a point to Jane?

TONY JONES
Quickly.

BOB CARR
That when you’re running immigration this high, no matter what the intentions of government, and its boldness in committing money to infrastructure, you will struggle to keep up. That is a fact of life.

TONY JONES
OK, Jane.

JANE FITZGERALD
Sue, I think the difference now, apart from the fact that you’ve actually got all levels of government, which I’m sure wasn’t the case, Bob, back then. I’m sure that there wasn’t a compact between the federal government, the state government, eight local government areas, to work together to make sure that the infrastructure goes in there first. What you need out there in Western Sydney under the City Deal is you need, I think, 1,300 classrooms, you need about 200,000 jobs. All of these things are built in to the City Deal.

TONY JONES
Jane, can I just pause you there? Because Sue had her hand up. We’ll go back to her question.

SUE JOHNSON
I just wanted to ask Jane how far does she think $15 million from the City Deal will take us in solving the problem.

JANE FITZGERALD
I think, Sue, that you’ve got to acknowledge that in New South Wales at the moment there’s about $80 billion being spent on road and rail infrastructure. There’s always a challenge, there is a catch-up that we’re doing at the moment. Regardless of what Bob says, we’re having to catch up in some parts of the city in relation to rail and infrastructure. But if we keep planning forward-looking... We have bodies now like Infrastructure Australia, that I mentioned before.

BOB CARR
Yeah, but, Jane, a very quick comment. Since 2011 there hasn’t been in New South Wales a single new transport project opened. There hasn’t been the cutting of a ribbon on a single one.

TONY JONES
OK, Bob, I’m going to pause you because we want to hear from the other the panellists, and we also want to hear from other questioners. And we’ve got a question from Camden. Another one of those cutting-edge areas. Bill Parker.

OUR ROADS ARE MESSED UP

BILL PARKER
Thanks, Tony. I have lived in the Camden area for about 20 years, and I’ve noticed a recurring pattern with traffic congestion. So, it gets to the point where it’s intolerable, the existing roads are widened. Six to 12 months later, they’re clogged up again. And then the pattern repeats every few years. People spend more time commuting, and there’s no integration out there. I know there’s no plan.

Our politicians now tell us regularly that there are budget constraints and we hear more about what we can’t do and what we can’t get. So, my question is, what will it take for our leaders to show vision to give our young nation a world-class integrated suburban transport network that will enrich our economies, our society, our quality of life, and still meet the future needs of urban sprawl?

TONY JONES
I’m going to start on this side of the panel. John Daley.

JOHN DALEY
Well, unfortunately, it’s going to take our politicians to have a lot more courage, because, so far, the way they’ve mainly tried to deal with that problem is by building more stuff. And, as you say, almost inevitably, when we build a new road, it pretty quickly gets congested. Now, if you go to a place that has a lot of people living in a very small area, but with very little congestion, you go to Singapore. Why is there so little congestion in Singapore? Well, partly, they’ve got more restrictions on buying a car, but largely because they essentially charge you to drive on the road, and they charge you a lot more to drive on the road when everybody else wants to drive on the road.

What’s known as road pricing. Now, it’s not wildly popular, would be a fair summary. The idea that we should pay, and particularly pay more, to go on our roads when we drive at peak hour is something that intuitively most people are a bit suspicious about. But the evidence is overwhelming that if you’re serious about actually trying to reduce congestion, that’s the kind of thing that works.

TONY JONES
But, John, it only works if you’ve got a first-class transport system. There’s no point stopping people driving their cars if there’s no other way to get to the city.

JOHN DALEY
But I would suggest, you know, Australia’s transport system is not that bad. There are plenty of roads, there are plenty of large roads. The issue is how much road space have we got relative to how many cars are trying to get...

TONY JONES
Let’s go back to our questioner. Do you have many other alternatives other than using...?

BILL PARKER
To go and live in Singapore, because we’ve discussed that. That’s how much we love the train system, but that’s as a tourist on a day-to-day basis. We see people commuting quite regularly on the train system.

Dr JAY SONG
I lived in Singapore for five years. I was born in South Korea, lived in the UK. Bob, you talk about the population growth rate in Australia is growing fast compared to other developed countries, but the other developed countries, they have a huge population. So, they don’t have to grow more, but we are a big country. Big, Australia, land-size wise. But population wise, we are quite small. 25 million people only. So we still have room to grow and to have more people who can come here willingly and to contribute to our society.

TONY JONES
Jay, I’m going to go to Tim Flannery there, because I suspect he might disagree with the general position. But what do you think, first of all, Tim, about the whole argument we are hearing that people would be much more likely to accept higher population growth if the infrastructure was there?

TIM FLANNERY
Well, our permission to allow that growth should be conditional upon that infrastructure actually being embarked upon. Why always the other way around? So, you know, there’s no trust in this. So, just to go to that issue of, yes, we’re a big country, and Canada is a big country and Antarctica is a big continent as well, there’s a lot of big places in the world, but the habitability is the thing. And around Australia, if you look at our capital cities, you can see the stress we are already under.

So in Perth and Adelaide, for example, 40% of their water supply already comes from desalinisation, yeah? Melbourne with its huge desal plant has bought itself about a decade of grace, of water security. Beyond that, things are going to get difficult again. We grow enough food to feed about 60 million people, but we export a lot of that, and high-quality food like seafood we import quite a lot. So, it’s a big land, but it is not a very fertile land. And its water resources are limited.

Dr JAY SONG
Of course, yes.

TIM FLANNERY
So we have to look at all of those factors as we grow. And with the impacts of climate change, places like Western Sydney are going to really start feeling the heat, because the heatwaves are getting longer, hotter and more frequent. The infrastructure we are building isn’t fit for purpose for that future. And I think we are going to struggle, I really do.

TONY JONES
Jay, do you accept that Australia may not be in the same category as the big population Asian countries because the climate is different?

Dr JAY SONG
I believe in Australians. Australia is a very innovative country. And Australia is investing a lot of money on R&D and renewable energy and can build better infrastructure, so that it can accommodate more people coming, so there is a great deal of potential and improvement for future generations.

TONY JONES
I’m going to go to our next question, it’s from Ruth Wallace. Once again, it’s about the pressures the infrastructure lack. So, Ruth, go ahead.


HOUSING DENSITY SCHOOLS

RUTH WALLACE
Yes. Like many schools in Sydney, my children’s primary school has grown from 350 children 10 years ago to over 1,000 children this year. The continued approval of high-density housing developments and the desirability of those suburbs in which these are places pressure on local services. Is state government courageous enough to place limits on housing density or make it a priority to fund new schools?

TONY JONES
John Daley, I’ll go to you, because obviously you’ve studied this, the Grattan Institute has looked at this very closely in Melbourne and, actually, around the country.

JOHN DALEY
Well, I hope that what our state governments do is get their act together on schools. Because the evidence is overwhelming – if we want our cities to be affordable and our housing to be affordable, we need more of that medium and high-density development. But the reality is most of the jobs we are creating are towards the centre of our cities and if you’re trying to commute to those jobs from the very far edge of those cities, it’s a very hard thing to do.

And, of course, Australian cities are very sparsely populated by global standards. I mean, obviously relative to old cities like Berlin and Rome. But even if you take a city like Toronto which is substantially larger in terms of population than Sydney and Melbourne, it’s smaller in terms of footprint, essentially because it is built up more. It doesn’t mean it’s got to be 30 storeys as far as the eye can see. It’s worth remembering that Paris is one of the densest cities in the world and most of it is only four storeys. So we can make our cities much denser, but you are absolutely right, we need to build the schools behind them.

TONY JONES
Just put some of the figures around it. From your report, we need 220 new schools in Victoria in the next 10 years. I think it’s 213 in New South Wales, nearly 200 in Queensland.

JOHN DALEY
Yeah, and most of them, towards the middle of our cities, and the middle ring suburbs of our cities, essentially because we are seeing an increase in density, particularly in Sydney, in the middle ring and in Melbourne right in the centre. And I don’t think that people 15 years ago believed that they would be families. Now, things have changed. A lot more families are prepared to live there, and so we need to make sure that politicians get behind that and invest the money in schools.

Why don’t they? Because there is a real pressure to build the new school wherever the people are yelling the loudest. So, certainly Victoria has had a pretty sensible-looking plan for a long time about what the priorities were given the actual population movements, but we often didn’t follow the plan, as the Auditor-General found. And so it’s something where you need discipline, you need to put the money into it and you need to actually stick with the priorities that go with the population rather than wherever there happens to be a local lobby group that’s a bit louder than all the other local lobby groups.

TONY JONES
OK. I’ll go to Bob.

BOB CARR
A bit of honesty on rezoning, on densities, would be much appreciated. A lot of the advocates of Big Australia seem to be concentrated in suburbs that don’t feel any of the pressure the rest of us feel. I’ve made the point – I made it just to be a bit cheeky – about Point Piper. If you went through the streets of Point Piper, every house would tell you – because they’re investors and one famous politician – they would tell you that they believe in a Big Australia. But they’re not getting any of the pleasure of the Big Australia. There’s no high-rise being planned there.

I’ll give you another example of dishonesty. Barry O’Farrell declared, when he was premier of New South Wales, he was a great supporter of a Big Australia, he wanted more ambitious immigration. One of his first planning acts as premier was to cancel plans for high-rise in his electorate along the North Shore rail line in Ku-ring-gai. Now, you can’t have that sort of dishonesty. You have got to say – here is one idea for a population plan for Australia, and that is...

TONY JONES
Which we don’t have, Bob.

BOB CARR
Exactly. Well, here’s one notion that belongs in it, to link increases in immigration to results in rezonings and let the Australian people understand the linkage that exists here. If you are running immigration at the levels we’ve seen, you are going to be living a high-density future. If you want to be honest about that and say, “We will live at Singapore densities or Hong Kong densities,” then you are being far more honest than the people in Canberra who set these immigration levels and have nothing to say about money for infrastructure or the resultant rezonings required.

TONY JONES
Jane wants to get in here.

JANE FITZGERALD
I think, again, to focus on the good news and what’s changed and what’s actually happening in Sydney right now, right now the Greater Sydney Commission, who are a bunch of planning experts, they’re not a bunch of politicians, are sitting down and looking at every part of Sydney and drawing up a plan. They’re drawing up a plan with housing targets that doesn’t include a high-density apartment block for every suburb, but it might include more town houses, more four-storey blocks of apartments in suburbs that I live in, or suburbs that you live in as well.

It will also include, hopefully, better retirement living for our ageing population, so people can age in place within their suburbs and it will also include, no doubt, fabulous, sustainable residential communities on the urban fringe as well.

BOB CARR
What about Point Piper?

TONY JONES
I’m going to pause all of you, because I’m gonna just tell my colleagues we’re gonna jump ahead to question number eight, and that is Jeanette Brokman, because it’s right on topic. Go ahead, Jeanette.

DEVELOPERS VS NIMBYS

JEANETTE BROKMAN
In our brave new world in New South Wales, we are seeing high-rise schools funded by developers and transport systems privatised, while jobs are casualised and suburbs turned into a developers’ paradise. Government slogans tell us “We’re Building Tomorrow’s Sydney” while taxpayer-funded projects go off the rails and the equity divide ever increases. With communities that fight back branded NIMBYs and government employees prevented from speaking out, what can we do to stop this Gordon Gekko type of world?

TONY JONES
John Daley, I’ll start with you. Are we living in a Gordon Gekko type of world?

JOHN DALEY
Well, that depends how we manage it. And I think one of the issues is if you want your children to be able to afford to buy housing, you will need to build more housing. It is pretty simple. And so it is all very well to say, well, I agree that there should be more building, but just not in my suburb, in the suburb next door, and then my children can live in the suburb next door, then we wind up in a world that is not far from where we have been for much of the period between about 2007 and 2013 in which population growth got well ahead of building growth.

Now, that said, there are plenty of things that we can have a look at, so for example, a lot of the time at the moment we rezone land, we change the rules so that you can build a lot more on it and we, essentially, just give that away. And whoever happens to own it at the time gets a huge windfall, and some very elegant work has been done in Queensland that shows that very disproportionately it’s property developers who own land at the time it gets rezoned which might just be coincidence, but I’m guessing not! The ACT has actually solved this. What the ACT does is that it has a whole series of rules that says every time the land gets rezoned, we know that creates a big uplift in value and essentially we take a lot of that back in tax. And that is something we need to look a lot more at. When we are going to rezone places to accommodate this growth, we say that’s not just a free kick for whoever happens to own it, that is something that we effectively take some of the value back so that it’s not just a game for Gordon Gekkos to get rich, not by actually building houses, but by holding land in the right places at the time it gets rezoned.

TONY JONES
John, let’s pick up on another point in the question, then I’ll come to Tim. You are the one, essentially, telling governments that people should not be able to say, “Not in my backyard.” You are warning about the Nimbyism. Our questioner, who’s got her hand up. Go ahead.

JEANETTE BROKMAN
I guess I just wanted to respond to John. I live in a suburb that has its fair share of heavy lifting and what’s happened is that incomes have declined because properties are very tiny now and they are very high vertical villages and incomes have declined, yet the land values have soared, because of the high densification. As a consequence, the suburb has become more expensive and has priced out the market and so I guess that was my question was – it is becoming a kind of Gordon Gekko type of world, with those that have and those that don’t have.

TONY JONES
OK. John, should people be fighting harder to say, “No, I don’t want that in my backyard?”

JOHN DALEY
Look, I hope not. I think you’re right, land values have probably gone up, but the cost of an individual dwelling is probably much lower than it would be otherwise. Now, I also agree, if your suburb is the only one that is seeing all of this development happening and Point Piper, or wherever, is not, then obviously that’s unfair. And we did...

TONY JONES
Why? Because, like, 50 people could live in Malcolm Turnbull’s house?

JOHN DALEY
Well, it’s also... If you certainly look at what’s been happening in Melbourne where we could actually get the data on this, what’s been happening is that the suburbs with the highest incomes have by and large been the ones that have been most successful at preventing development and slowing it down.

BOB CARR
Exactly.

JOHN DALEY
They are also the ones where, according to the Reserve Bank, the premiums are highest for the right to develop. Now, that’s a problem. And in a world in which politicians, at least in some states, have essentially said – “You can do it in the suburbs where the people vote for the other side, but you can’t do it in the suburbs that vote for my side of politics” – that’s a problem.

TONY JONES
OK, I’m going to come to the Property Council in a moment, but Tim wants to get in.

TIM FLANNERY
Yeah, look, Jeanette, that vision you just outlined of Australia is what I feel too. And it really worries me. And I just feel that our... We have left it to the experts, we have left it to politicians and we have ended up with a mess. And it’s...I have got enormous faith in the common sense of just average Australians. And I can’t think of a better way of dealing with this than to put the power back into the hands of well-informed average Australians, through something like a jury system. You know, 200 of us chosen at random and given access to all the facts and asked to make a decision and given a time to do it and paid to do it would come up with a decision that would be representative, I believe, of what Australians want.

TONY JONES
How would the Property Council deal with the jury deciding where the developments go?

(LAUGHTER)

JANE FITZGERALD
Look, I think that it would be better than local politicians campaigning on the basis that they’re going to stop growth in a suburb, when they actually aren’t well placed to do that, or shouldn’t do that to house our kids. We know in Sydney from the Reserve Bank last week released a report that said zoning restrictions in Sydney are adding $489,000 to the price of a home. That’s extraordinary. If we don’t try to do density well, if we don’t try to do density better, and we don’t look at each suburb, with its existing built form in place, I’m not suggesting there should be apartment blocks in every suburb in Sydney. What I’m saying is that every suburb in Sydney, every community in Sydney, if you want your kids to be able to live within 100km of where you live, it needs to be part of a conversation about how we do density well. And that’s what’s missing. That requires some serious political leadership. Otherwise, you’re paying $490,000 extra for the price of a home. The Reserve Bank data, not the Property Council.

TONY JONES
OK. I just want to hear from Jay on this. You have lived in Singapore, you know the situation in very high-density cities with high populations. Do they just give up on the idea of having leafy suburbs and backyards and all of those sort of things, and is life any better or worse as a result?

Dr JAY SONG
Well, before I moved to Singapore, I thought Singapore was just all grey high-rise buildings. But actually, they planned it very well. So patches of green areas, so there is a great mixture of, you know, high-rise buildings. But Singapore has a policy, you know, to give the public housing to their citizens so most of the Singaporean citizens own their house. Public housing also have a quota for a certain number of Chinese citizens and the Malay and Indian so that they can have racial harmony in one apartment block. Singapore is a high-density, you know, it’s a city state. But I don’t think Sydney or Melbourne is going to be like Singapore or Hong Kong. I think we are more likely to be New York, London...

TONY JONES
So how many people in Singapore?

Dr JAY SONG
Five million.

TONY JONES
OK, Sydney is going to have eight million, Melbourne is going to have more than eight million...

Dr JAY SONG
Yeah, London has eight.

TONY JONES
Are you sure we won’t look like those cities?

Dr JAY SONG
This is why we are having this conversation today, isn’t it?

JOHN DALEY
And bear in mind, Tony, I don’t know precisely what it is, but I would guess that Sydney and Melbourne have something like 20 times the footprint of Singapore.

BOB CARR
Exactly.

JOHN DALEY
You do not need to make Melbourne and Sydney look like Singapore or Hong Kong in order to double their population. Nothing like it.

TONY JONES
OK, nonetheless, a good deal of frustration out there. Let’s got to Jed Smith. Jed?

RENTS AND WORKING PEOPLE

JED SMITH
Yeah, I was raised by a single mother in inner city Sydney. She is in her 50s now, and those people are doing it pretty tough, she’s barely hanging on by a thread to the rental market. My question is, who or what decides how much we should pay for the privilege of having a roof over our heads? Who or what decided that the working-class in this country should have to work six days a week and commute between two to five hours a day for 40 years, just so they can afford a home? Who decided that we should get little more than an hour a night, and one full day a week to spend with our loved ones doing the things that bring us joy and happiness?

TONY JONES
Bob Carr. I mean, did you hear this kind of...?

(APPLAUSE)

TONY JONES
It’s a sense you get, and you hear it in the audience, that life has changed underneath us while we weren’t watching.

BOB CARR
Yeah, and to a large extent, it’s determined by raw market forces that we’ve opted to allow to determine the way we live, by the laws of supply and demand. And if we say, if we say there are going to be 100,000 extra residents in a Sydney, in a Melbourne each and every year, we will have an effect on how we live. We can’t alter that. On journey times and on wages, on wages. We haven’t discussed, one of the impacts of high immigration, and that is downward pressure on wages. We had the Reserve Bank tell us that wages are too low. There is not enough growth in wages. And the reason is, the reason is, we’ve got extraordinarily high immigration as part of our economic system. The upward pressure on housing prices, that has had a huge impact on how Australians live now.

TONY JONES
Bob, I’ve got a few heads shaking over this side. I’m going to hear from...

BOB CARR
I’m sure you have!

TONY JONES
I’m going to hear from Jay and then go to John. So are migrants bringing down wages?

Dr JAY SONG
You keep going on about migration, and finger-pointing migration as an issue. The issue is the infrastructure. You have to keep up...

BOB CARR
Not with wages. That’s got nothing to do with infrastructure. We are talking about wages. We are talking about downward pressure on wages.

Dr JAY SONG
Migrants create jobs, Bob. They pay tax, they also create jobs...

BOB CARR
That is not the issue. That’s not the issue.

Dr JAY SONG
What’s the issue, then?

TONY JONES
Hang on, Bob. Hang on, Bob. I’ll come back to you. But we’re going to hear from Jay.

Dr JAY SONG
The issue is not about immigration. I mean, they come in, most of them, 60% of them, as I said, at the beginning of my conversation, are skilled migrants. And they are regularly, the occupation list is regularly updated by the Department of Industry and together with the Department of... used to be Immigration and Border Protection, now it’s the Home Office, so they are doing a good job to keep checking the Australian businesses who need skills shortages in certain industries. We still need those skilled migrants who can contribute to our society.

BOB CARR
Jay, with respect, not according to the latest...

TONY JONES
Hang on, Bob. Hang on, Bob, please. I said I’d go to John. I want to hear from him.

JOHN DALEY
So, Bob, there is lots of OECD research. This is something that people have looked at a lot. And the consensus of that essentially seems to be that immigrants by and large do not push down wages. And particularly not when, as Australia has, those migrants are skewed young and skilled. In fact, in that world, they probably, if anything, push average wages up a little bit. That is what the evidence says, both in the OECD, and the Productivity Commission has come to more or less the same conclusion. Now, that said, you are absolutely right that migrants do, all other things being equal, increase house prices, but that depends on, what do you do about construction? So, Sydney, this year, is going to deliver in the order of about 35,000 extra dwellings, that, I think, is the highest on record. It needs to be, because population growth is almost the highest, is the highest on record in Sydney. But at that level, we would essentially be building enough housing given the increase in population. The catch is we didn’t do that for the last ten years. We ran migration at this level, we did not see substantial increase in housing, largely because the planning system locked it up, and that’s why we saw house prices go through the roof.

TONY JONES
OK, Bob, a quick response, ‘cause I’ve got to go to another question.

BOB CARR
A very quick response is about the failure of our Skilled Migration Program. The most recent study that I read by Bob Birrell, shows that you could abolish it tomorrow without any employers seeing the difference. We are importing professionals, we are importing professionals who are unemployed. Now, we’ve got to reassess the notion we hold that the Skilled Migration Program as we make it work is delivering relief from skill shortages.

TONY JONES
Jane wants to respond to that, a quick response. And then I’ll move on.

JANE FITZGERALD
I actually want to come back to Jed’s question. Because I think it’s a really valid one in terms of how we make our lives, as a whole, work better. And part of the answer, a big part of the answer, Jed, is that we have to do the planning that’s currently going on now. But then we have to actually implement it so that you can have a job that is near where you live so you are not commuting for two hours and not getting time to spend with your mum or your kids, or whatever it might be. We need to do that, we need to make sure they are real jobs, we need to make sure that the transport between those two locations is good, but we also need to make sure that you’ve got a park that you can go and kick a footy around.

TONY JONES
And we probably need to make sure that houses don’t cost a million dollars.

JANE FITZGERALD
Absolutely. And I completely agree with John’s point. His report made it incredibly eloquently last week, as did the RBA report, that if we don’t fix the planning system, and, sure, we delivered a record number of houses last year and we need to deliver 725,000 more by 2036. We’re going to have to do it better for decades.

TONY JONES
OK. We’ve got some people with some slightly different ideas on how you can fix this. One is Bob Beckett. Go ahead, Bob.

REGIONAL SOLUTION/HIGH SPEED RAIL

BOB BECKETT
So far we have talked a lot about solutions that are Sydney-centric. So they involve increasing density in infrastructure within Sydney and the current vision is one of three cities between the current CBD, Parramatta and around Western Sydney airport. My question is, is it not also time to seriously consider improving high-speed transportation with nearby regional centres, such as Newcastle, Gosford and Wollongong, to put them within a realistic commutable distance and relieve some of the pressure from Sydney itself?

(APPLAUSE)

TONY JONES
Bob... John, I beg your pardon. John Daley, it seems we are talking about infrastructure, and this is one of the big ones, we’ve got these huge mega-cities coming, but why not just expand the populations in regional centres and create proper transport connections between them?

JOHN DALEY
Well, it depends what we think we are doing. If what we think we’re doing is creating a whole bunch of extra jobs in regional centres, then I think we’re going to be disappointed. We have 117 years of official policy to do that, and so far, 117 years of failure. So I’d be surprised if this time is different. If we think we’re doing it because we are essentially making Newcastle and Wollongong, to some extent, dormitory towns for Sydney, well, that’s doable. But you’ve got to ask, well, why would I bother doing that rather than just making sure that the rail link works from the edge of Sydney, which is by definition, closer than either Newcastle or Wollongong? And better still, why wouldn’t I increase the density in the middle rings of Sydney, where, inherently, I’m only about half an hour’s commuting distance from the centre of Sydney using existing transport networks?

TONY JONES
Why not...? John, why not do both things? And then you’ve got the opportunity to develop regional Australia whilst simultaneously developing the inner rings or the middle rings, as you call them.

JOHN DALEY
You might well do both but I think what you’ll find is that commuting all the way to Sydney from Newcastle and from Wollongong is actually a lot harder than it sounds. I have staff members who commute from Castlemaine which is, you know, it’s about an hour’s commute, it’s probably a bit similar, and they’ve rapidly got to the point, after a year and a half, of saying, you know, “John, I never get home before dark, it’s just too hard.”

TONY JONES
They don’t do it by high-speed rail, which was the question. So, Tim.

TIM FLANNERY
Whether you do it by high-speed rail or by some other means, high-speed rail just pushes it out further, I think. And what John’s saying is absolutely right. You look at towns like Ballarat and some of the areas around Melbourne, where they’re sort of dormitory suburbs, it’s actually had a big effect on the town and life in those towns. You know, I think we’ve got so many infrastructure problems at the moment that are crying out to be fixed. Let’s start with the stuff we really need to do now, to serve the populations that are already really struggling, rather than looking at these sort of projects.

TONY JONES
I’m going to move on quickly to another question from Rachel Chiu. Rachel is in the middle there. Go ahead, Rachel. Thank you very much.

REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT - MIGRATION

RACHEL CHIU
So, my question is do you think it’s viable to develop Australia’s regional centre as a way of alleviating the pressure on our major cities? And if so, would it create...if we create industry by directing migration or refugee settlements to these regional centres?

TONY JONES
I’ll start with Jay. What do you think? We talked about high-speed rail – you can come in on that as well – because, obviously, there’s huge infrastructure in high-speed rail in China, in Japan and many other Asian countries. But also, that’s a question really saying, should we send migrants to regional centres? Should we make it compulsory?

Dr JAY SONG
Sure. Our government has tried already to settle those 150 Karen refugees from Myanmar to settle in Victoria, regional Victoria, called Nhill, and that was very successful. They did it with the local community, who had a plan, who can hire those newly arriving refugees to give them job and give them livelihood and it worked very well.

And there is a study by Regional Australia Institute that migrants stay in those regional states and regional areas and it works for them...also for the community, the local community, to grow. So, yeah, I mean, growing in not just the big cities, but spreading out and giving more job and housing opportunities for those incoming migrants, or the temporary migrants, to move to...relocate to those regional cities, that would be a great solution.

TONY JONES
Bob, I’ll bring you in here – decentralisation was one of the big plans of the Whitlam government back in the early ‘70s. It just never happened, did it?

BOB CARR
It’s part of Australia’s DNA. We love the idea. But America is the continent where that can happen. Inland cities based on strong river systems, rivers flowing down the Rocky Mountains. We haven’t got that. Two problems...

TONY JONES
We don’t have the Rocky Mountains. Plenty of rivers.

BOB CARR
Two problems... Well, every river on the Australian continent would fit in the Mississippi and the Mississippi wouldn’t notice it. There are geographic limits about Australia and two really do undermine the happy faith we, as Australians, have sometimes invested in decentralisation.

One is water. Don’t forget, in the last drought, that you had inland cities running out of water. It was particularly acute in Goulburn and Canberra, for example. And that is really a restraint on how you could build population in those centres. And, second, decentralisation only works where you have some terrific value-adding industry. An efficient abattoir, for example, or a mine, like the Cadia gold and copper mine in Orange.

TONY JONES
Or the Federal Government, like in Canberra, where there’s no high-speed rail.

BOB CARR
Exactly. Beautiful example. And by the way, talking so fondly as we are of Canberra, Canberra, the city, where immigration targets are set for all of Australia, the targets that Sydney and Melbourne have got to cope with, Canberra has the lowest population densities of any capital city in Australia.

TONY JONES
OK, Bob, you mentioned America and we have a question picking up on this idea of smaller cities from Jennifer Crawford.

SMALL CITIES

JENNIFER CRAWFORD
Why don’t we do small cities in Australia? Outside the capital cities and their associated conurbations, the largest inland city in New South Wales is Albury-Wodonga, with a population of just under 90,000. Next is Coffs Harbour with 69,000 and Wagga with 56,000. If you look around the world, there are many famous small cities. York in the UK has 200,000, Bristol in the UK has 428,000, Lyon in France is 480,000, Portland in the USA is 640,000 and even Seattle in the USA is only 700,000 people. How much more pleasant would life be in small Australian cities of between 250,000 to 500,000 people? As an architect, I’m really excited by the idea. Why can’t we seem to do it?

(APPLAUSE)

TONY JONES
Jane, why can’t we do it? Bob said we don’t have the big rivers, but what do you think?

JANE FITZGERALD
I think that when we’re talking about planning cities of tomorrow, smart cities of the future, there are some things that we know that work, and I was just thinking about Newcastle and Wollongong. And one of the things that both of those cities have are world-class universities, which are very much an attracter for innovation, for students, and that is why Newcastle and Wollongong are actually on a really good growth trajectory at the moment, that I think what you need to be able to do, apart from getting the transport links right, is you need to have that attracter, as Bob mentioned.

But also a part of it is about branding and about selling yourself to the world. And I know that we’ve got members in Newcastle and Wollongong who are working through that process with the universities in those towns.

TONY JONES
I’d just like to quickly go back to our questioner, who has her hand up. Jennifer, go ahead.

JENNIFER CRAWFORD
Well, Bathurst has Charles Sturt University and there’s also the University of England in Armidale. My aunty lived in Armidale. It’s quite a pleasant town and not as hot as other towns in western New South Wales. So, I’m kind of wondering why can’t we, as you suggest, piggyback off those university towns and make them grow to a size that can sustain theatre, good coffee, yoga classes, and all the stuff that us Inner-West hipsters want to move to?

TONY JONES
Actually, I’ll go to Tim there. Could we do that in Australia? Could we have lots of smaller cities that still had reasonable populations and be good places to live?

TIM FLANNERY
Look, the history of Australia has been really telling in that regard because we have seen a relative shrinkage of many of those inland cities. And I think the reason is that the resource base is just so limited. So, even the agricultural resource base in many of those areas, even our rich irrigation areas, is really small compared with the resource base over much of North America or Europe or East Asia. There’s just...it’s really hard to marshal enough resources – even with education as being one of those things – and mass to break through. And, yet, in Melbourne and Sydney, we’re part of a global community, really. A lot of our wealth comes from that international trade. Once you get into real Australia, outside that, the...

TONY JONES
Well, if the NBN is in those places, anyone can do anything, can’t they?

(LAUGHTER)

TIM FLANNERY
Even Nhill, where the Myanmar migrants went to, if you look at the resources available there, it’s in the middle of Victorian Mallee. There’s not a mountain to be seen.

TONY JONES
John Daley, what about this? I mean, I know you’re putting all your trust in the middle rings of the existing cities and you think that just building more higher-density properties in those areas will solve all our problems. But surely, it won’t, when we get to 40 million.

JOHN DALEY
Well, let’s worry about 40 million when we get there. We’re currently at 25.

TONY JONES
John, we have to worry about it now! Otherwise, there’s no point. That’s what thinking institutes are meant for.

JOHN DALEY
Yeah, yeah.

(LAUGHTER)

JOHN DALEY
We may be a thinking institute, but we’re also a kind of...a regional town institute, and my experience is that you can see plenty of good theatre and drink plenty of good coffee in an awful lot of Australian regional towns already. But what I would note is that you’re absolutely right – places like Armidale, more distant from, say, a big centre like Sydney, are not growing that fast.

Why not? And the answer is fundamentally not because people won’t go there but fundamentally because employers choose not to go there. Now, why is it that employers make that choice? The answer is well, either they’re in agriculture – and, as Tim says, the base is not that large and, in fact, agriculture is becoming more efficient which, of course, means it requires fewer people. And instead most employers in Australia are in service industries and one of the things we know about service businesses around the world, not just in Australia, is that they tend to want to be where all the other service businesses are.

Now, that’s not true if you’re the hairdresser, and it’s less true if you are the local hospital. But it’s very true for most of the service businesses in our economy. And they want to be where the other service businesses are and that’s what makes...drives them into the big cities. And, so, this phenomenon that we see in Australia of big cities accumulating more and more of the population is something that we see happening around the world and the only reason that Wollongong and Newcastle are growing faster is precisely because they are close enough to Sydney. So, we see the same phenomenon in Victoria with Ballarat and Bendigo growing faster than most of the other inland towns, precisely because they are closer to Melbourne.

TONY JONES
OK, well, first of all, I’d say this. The interest in this subject is huge so we commit to continuing on it. But we’re nearly out of time. So, we have time for one last question. It comes from Fiona Batt.

GLOBAL POPULATION

FIONA BATT
The global population is forecast to peak at 9.5 billion people by 2075. That’s an increase of about 40% on current levels. How can we morally and ethically say to the rest of the world, “You deal with the population pressures, the environmental problems and the sheer cost of 40% more people because we’re full”?

TONY JONES
Jay, we’ll start with you, and if you want to pick up on the previous question, you can do that as well.

Dr JAY SONG
I wanted to respond to Jennifer. I mean, if they are such beautiful, small towns, I will be the first person who would like to go there if there is a job for a migration expert! I’ll definitely go there. Sounds great.

You’re absolutely right. This is a global connected world. We can’t ignore that population is growing outside Australia. You know, bringing people in, having connection... And the most important thing is to have the broadband. The fixed broadband speed is very slow in Australia, as a South Korean. One page to the next, normally two seconds.

TONY JONES
Thank you, Malcolm Turnbull.

(LAUGHTER)

Dr JAY SONG
There’s a connected world. We need a connection and innovation. And for that, we need talent and there is a global race for talent and these highly mobile people going around... You know, “Where is the best country to live permanently?” And I, myself, like millions of other people in Australia, chose Australia ‘cause we see potential there.

TONY JONES
Tim Flannery, let’s put it this way, can you actually make a moral case for keeping our migration levels low when those people will be living somewhere in the world anyway?

TIM FLANNERY
Absolutely, I think you can. Because we have to look at our foreign aid budget as well as our migration budget and say, “How can we do the best for people anywhere? Where can we target that foreign aid budget to bring about a better quality of life as well as having some immigration?” Look at it holistically if the welfare of people is what’s paramount, as I think it should be. But those figures you gave, I don’t think they are right. We’re at about 7.4 billion now, it will be 9.4 billion by 2070, so that’s not a lot of growth over 50-odd years. I think that’s going to be manageable. I really do.

TONY JONES
John Daley?

JOHN DALEY
I think you’re absolutely right. So far, we’ve been talking about it from a self-interested Australian perspective. And there is another perspective here, which is essentially, “What about the interests of those people who would otherwise migrate?” And I think that is a legitimate interest.

And they probably will lead much better lives if they come to Australia, chances are. That is not just because there are other options, it’s also because Australia has a whole series of existing high-quality institutions – by global standards a genius for integrating migrants into our community. So, chances are they will do better here than in a lot of other places. We obviously can’t accommodate the entire world. But if we can accommodate some, we’re helping people that otherwise would be less well off. And you can make a pretty strong moral case for doing that.

TONY JONES
Jane Fitzgerald?

JANE FITZGERALD
Despite the challenges, Australian cities are amongst some of the most liveable in the world. You’ll have seen the results. Melbourne – the most liveable city in the world. I think four of our capital cities are in the top...

TONY JONES
That’s largely to do with its climate. Believe it or not.

JANE FITZGERALD
Yes, it’s climate, it’s a whole range of factors and there’s certainly things that we don’t rank as well on. But at the end of the day, Melbourne is number one. People want to come to Melbourne. And if we don’t plan for that growth, if we don’t constructively and collaboratively work across governments and broadly as a community and talk about what we want from the growth, rather than what we don’t want, then we’re doing ourselves a disservice and we’re doing our kids a disservice, let alone the people who might come, like Jay, and make a wonderful contribution to this country.

TONY JONES
Bob Carr? Final word.

BOB CARR
If you say the test of our migrant policy is our obligation to the world, our moral obligation to the world that that is how we’ll run immigration, there’d be no limit. We’d certainly be saying we would take a million people a year.

Our obligation to the world is best expressed by us managing sustainably this vast and remarkable and beautiful continent we’ve got and making ourselves so prosperous that through our overseas development assistance program, we can be regarded as the most generous of the world’s wealthy countries. And not least by running an aid program with the most important feature in it being funding of family planning. Because that is the contribution that can make the most decisive difference in elevating a country out of the misery of mass poverty and on to the trajectory of becoming a middle-income nation.

TONY JONES
I don’t want quite want to end on a prophylactic effect. So, let me just ask a political question to you.

BOB CARR
You can’t run a program about population and not run that risk.

TONY JONES
Just before we go out, Tony Abbott – and you seem to be on the same page with him on this – made the same case you are making, halving the migration policy, a couple of weeks ago. His Cabinet colleagues all jumped on him and silenced him quickly. What do you think is going on?

BOB CARR
You’re asking me to analyse Tony Abbott’s motivation in this?

TONY JONES
No, no, only since you agree with him on the migration?

BOB CARR
Well, he agrees with me.

(LAUGHTER)

BOB CARR
I’ve been saying this longer than him. Look, Tony, I rest my case with this proposition – we can achieve all the decent effects we want for ourselves and for others by running an immigration program just markedly less ambitious than it’s been, giving us time to recover, to get things right. Don’t shrug it off and say, “It’s all a matter of planning, it’s all a matter of infrastructure.” That’s too easy. That’s an easy way out. Let’s get it right by giving ourselves a bit of planning space, by just seeing that the level comes down appreciably. That’s the position that 74% of Australians have reached. And I think, on this, they’re absolutely right.

TONY JONES
Bob Carr, we’ll have to leave it there. That’s all we have time for tonight. Please thank our panel – Tim Flannery, John Daley, Jay Song, Jane Fitzgerald and Bob Carr. Now you can applaud.

(APPLAUSE)

TONY JONES
Thank you. And... Um, it is clear, as I said earlier, the interest in this subject is quite profound. The debate will continue on this program – we’ll stick with it. But you can continue the discussion right now with Q&A Extra on News Radio and Facebook Live, where Scott Wales is joined by Dr Andy Marks, Assistant Vice Chancellor of Western Sydney University. Next Monday on Q&A, Minister for Social Services Dan Tehan, Shadow Minister for Climate Change and Energy Mark Butler, security consultant Lydia Khalil, Director of the Centre for Independent Studies Tom Switzer, and political reporter with Buzzfeed Australia Alice Workman. Until next week’s Q&A, goodnight.

Bob Carr

Bob Carr fulfilled a lifelong ambition when he became Australia’s Foreign Minister in March 2012. The former Labor premier of NSW was appointed by Julia Gillard to fill a casual Senate vacancy and went directly into Cabinet in the foreign affairs portfolio, but quit the Senate shortly after Labor lost government in 2013.

Previously Bob had been the longest continuously-serving Premier in the history of NSW. He served as Leader of the Opposition from 1988 until his election as Premier in March 1995. He was re-elected in 1999 and then in March 2003 he secured a third four-year term.

He retired from State politics in 2005 after over 10 years as Premier.

As Premier he introduced the world's first carbon trading scheme and curbed the clearing of native vegetation as an anti-greenhouse measure. He was a member of the International Task Force on Climate Change convened by UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, and was made a life member of the Wilderness Society in 2003. He has also received the World Conservation Union International Parks Merit Award for creating 350 new national parks.

Bob has received the Fulbright Distinguished Fellow Award Scholarship. He has served as Honorary Scholar of the Australian American Leadership Dialogue. His books include Diary of a Foreign Minister, Thoughtlines, What Australia Means to Me and My Reading Life.

He is an advocate for reduced immigration numbers, saying it is impossible for infrastructure and services to keep pace with the growth in population.

Tim Flannery

Professor Tim Flannery is one of Australia’s leading writers on sustainability and climate change. An internationally acclaimed scientist, explorer and conservationist, Tim was named Australian of the Year in 2007.

Tim has held various academic positions including Professor at the University of Adelaide, director of the South Australian Museum in Adelaide, Principal Research Scientist at the Australian Museum and Visiting Chair in Australian Studies at Harvard University in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology.

In 2011 Tim was appointed as the Chief Commissioner of the Climate Commission by the Australian Government. This was a panel of leading scientists and business experts whose mandate was to provide an "independent and reliable" source of information for all Australians.

On 2013 Tim was sacked from his position as head of the Climate Commission in a phone call from new Federal Environment Minister Greg Hunt. It was also announced that the Commission would be dismantled.

In October that year Tim and the other commissioners had launched the Climate Council which had the same goals as its predecessor.

Tim has been a well-known presenter on ABC Radio and elsewhere for more than a decade. He has also written and presented several series on the Documentary Channel including The Future Eaters (1998), Wild Australasia (2003), Islands in the Sky (1992) and Bushfire (1997). His books include Here on Earth (2010) and The Weather Makers (2005).

Jane Fitzgerald

Jane Fitzgerald is Executive Director of the New South Wales Division of the Property Council of Australia, leading the advocacy agenda at a time of enormous investment and change in the sector.

Prior to her appointment, Jane was a senior executive with the Commonwealth Attorney-General’s Department and, amongst other roles, was the Chief Executive Officer of the Royal Commission into Trade Union Governance and Corruption.

Previously, Jane was the Deputy Director-General of the NSW Ministry for Police and chief of staff to two ministers in the NSW Government. Jane has a law degree and an arts degree majoring in politics from the University of NSW. She is also a moderator with the Cranlana Programme, an independent organisation with a broad objective to cultivate wisdom in leadership.

John Daley

John Daley is the inaugural Chief Executive of Grattan Institute, which provides independent, rigorous and practical solutions to Australia’s most pressing public policy issues. The current programs of Grattan Institute focus on productivity growth, cities, school education, tertiary education, energy and health.

John’s work at Grattan Institute has focused on economic and budgetary reform. He is particularly interested in government prioritisation. His other interests include analysing the situations in which government intervention is justified, and the limits to government.

He has 25 years’ experience spanning policy, academic, government and corporate roles. He has worked for the Victorian Department of Premier and Cabinet, McKinsey and Co, and ANZ where he was Managing Director of the online stockbroker, E*TRADE Australia.

John completed an LLB (Hons) and a BSc at the University of Melbourne in 1989, and a doctorate in public law at the University of Oxford in 1999.

Jiyoung Song

Dr Jiyoung Song is Senior Lecturer in Korean Studies at the Asia Institute of the University of Melbourne, Australia. Prior to her current position, she was a Director of Migration and Border Policy at the Lowy Institute (Sydney), Global Ethics Fellow of the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs (New York), Assistant Professor of Political Science at Singapore Management University, Associate Fellow of Chatham House (Royal Institute of International Affairs, London), Consultant for the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (Geneva), and Human Rights Officer at the National Human Rights Commission of South Korea (Seoul).

Jay also held several other academic positions at the National University of Singapore, the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge. She completed a PhD in Politics and International Studies (Cambridge, UK), LLM in Human Rights (Hong Kong), and BS in Mathematics (Seoul, Korea). She is the author of The History of Human Rights Society in Singapore, 1965-2015 (London: Routledge, 2017), Irregular Migration and Human Security in East Asia (London: Routledge, 2014), Human Rights Discourse in North Korea: Post-colonial, Marxist and Confucian Perspectives (London: Routledge, 2010), and a number of peer-reviewed academic articles. Her current research focuses on migration and human security in Asia-Pacific, using complexity theory.

Questions

Links to audience questions.

• Introduction 0:00
• MASS MIGRATION ANGER 1.16
• MIGRATION/POP GROWTH 11.08
• TRANSPORT BEFORE DEVELOPMENT 19.05
• OUR ROADS ARE MESSED UP 25.03
• HOUSING DENSITY SCHOOLS 30.10
• DEVELOPERS VS NIMBYS 36.56
• RENTS AND WORKING PEOPLE 43.53
• REGIONAL SOLUTION/HIGH SPEED RAIL 49.46
• REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT - MIGRATION 52.34
• SMALL CITIES 55:49
• GLOBAL POPULATION 61.29

MASS MIGRATION ANGER 1.16
MIGRATION/POP GROWTH 11.08
TRANSPORT BEFORE DEVELOPMENT 19.05
OUR ROADS ARE MESSED UP 25.03
HOUSING DENSITY SCHOOLS 30.10
DEVELOPERS VS NIMBYS 36.56
RENTS AND WORKING PEOPLE 43.53
REGIONAL SOLUTION/HIGH SPEED RAIL 49.46
REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT - MIGRATION 52.34
SMALL CITIES 55:49
GLOBAL POPULATION 61.29

The page I am writing about is on the Australian ABC website, entitled, "You decide Australia’s population, we’ll show you how it looks," by journalist Inga Ting, Mark Doman, Ri Liu and Nathan Hoad. The arguments presented are a kind of demographer's fantasy. Demography is not population science; it is maths and statistics. Maths and statistics are not themselves science. They can be used as much for population science, to test theories, as they can be used for advertising and propaganda. Demographers are often also economists and they usually try to establish trends in population numbers in isolation from the environment, social values, or deep history. What they call population science is usually only economics, which many people think is now practised as a dogma. They do not tend to challenge propaganda and, for this reason, they are very useful for governments and corporate media that want to push peoples' thinking in a certain direction about population.[1] This interactive article on the ABC gets the reader to make certain decisions, comes up with biased feedback, and then invites the reader to change their minds. To be unbiased, this interactive would need to list the positives of lowering population growth. It fails to. It does mention some as opinions, but it does not employ related arguments in its presentation of demographic trends in Australia.

The message of "You decide Australia’s population, we’ll show you how it looks," is that if we choose low immigration, the size of the population over 64 will be greater than the size of the population under 15 yrs old. It compares the size of the post WW2 baby-boomer population, as if this were a norm, with the projected elderly population.

"In 2101, one in eight Australians will be children, compared to nearly one in three in 1960. At the same time, one in three will be 65 or older, compared to one in 10 in 1960."

There are a number of flaws in this.

1. The baby boomer population was the first of its kind, and should not be used as a norm.

2. There is an insistence on maintaining and increasing our current population in Australia and, by implication, everywhere else, but our current populations are the largest by an order of magnitude that have ever existed. They are not 'normal'. They are out of proportion to all human history and other species. They are an exception that is very hard to maintain materially, has many political, energy and biological-ecological problems, and few positives, except in terms of profits made by a few through inflation of resource prices.

3. Comparing numbers of children 15 and under to people over 64 is comparing one arbitrarily selected cohort over a limited number of years - 15 - to another of a larger number of years - 64 to, say, 100 - amounting to 36 years. If we were to compare a similar number of years in the older cohort, we might compare older people in 15 year cohorts, such as people aged 85-100, or people aged 70-85, or people aged 65-80.

4. The dependency ratio of children to adults 64 and over is not cut and dried, not predictable. Elderly people are much less dependent than babies, toddlers, school children, who almost never earn their living. These days children's dependency may last far longer than 15 years. Some people will never find any reliable legal work in our future society, due to the declining affordability and standard of Australia's education system, the effects of industry automation, and competition from immigrants selected for their education and skills.

5. The greatest cost in all cohorts - dependent and independent; children, adults and older adults - is the cost of land for housing and business. These costs are hugely inflated by population growth. If we allowed population growth to slow naturally, then no-one would have to work so hard to have housing, businesses would have much bigger profit margins, wages could fall and people would still have enough money to live well, and the few elderly people who finish up in high dependency care units for long periods of time, would not have to pay nearly so much for their care, because the land and therefore wage costs of those old-age care facilities would be greatly reduced.

This manipulative article talks about 'demographic problems' associated with Japan's population decline, but there were more problems associated with the overpopulation that Japan suffered from, including reliance on nuclear power plants in earthquake and tsunami-prone areas:

Perhaps most alarming, however, is the threat of a shrinking population. In South Korea and Japan, for example, very low birth rates combined with few immigrants and high life expectancy have led to a dwindling workforce and rapidly-growing elderly population. "Demographically these countries are in quite serious trouble," Dr Wilson said.

These 'problems' solve themselves. Expatriots are returning to Japan from Australia because the housing has become affordable again and it is a pleasant place to live. An older population does not need the frantic productivity that a young industrialising one does. The population will presumably return to much lower levels, perhaps those of the Edo period, which was a Japanese social pinnacle, when the country was self-sufficient.[2]

It is the property development lobby that wants population growth and which has lobbied for it since the 1904 Royal Commission into the Decline in the Birth Rate in New South Wales (which was actually caused by men leaving the state to goldmine in Queensland and then in West Australia, but don't tell anyone).[3] If the population growth rate fell now in Australia, then the growth lobby would just shrivel up and die, industry-wise, and we could get on with our actual lives. You can imagine the fuss and bother that the death throws of our malignant growth lobby would cause as they thrashed around in our parliaments and councils, our banks and insurance industries, our mining and road-building industries - but after the dust settled, most of us would be so much wealthier because our cost of living would have plummeted. Necessary industries would continue - as they did in Australia before the two wars, when we built most of the things we now import: cars, aeroplanes, scientific instruments, pharmaceuticals ...

Evolutionary population theory argues that the long-lived elderly people in tribal societies were the repository for knowledge and judgement. If everyone had only lived to thirty years old (as is often supposed) a society would have little capacity to develop culture or complex language. Consider what it may mean to our societies to have people living to one hundred years old and more. It might make the difference between a society that is wrecked by capitalist demands and a society with people who have many years of experience and can identify snake oil because they have heard it before.

Actual dependency: Are treatable illnesses that cause dependency and death in the elderly being systematically overlooked?

With regard to actual dependency in the elderly, as a person with a background in nursing, as well as sociology, I would suggest that we restart Vitamin B12 therapy for people over 60 [and for vegetarians and vegans and new mothers and their children. There is now a higher risk for everyone due to the addition of Folic Acid to our foods.] Diagnosing Alzheimers is not an exact science and I know from experience that much treatable Vitamin B12 deficiency goes under the radar, even while it is resulting in dementia and loss of the ability to walk. [See /node/4463.] There are so many more people in walkers and on electric carts these days. Question them and you will find that almost none have any idea of their Vit B12 status. I would also suggest that we revise our therapeutic levels for these upwards, to at least the Japanese norms. (Note that you can buy high-dose sublingual Vit B12 now which in many cases does the job the injections do.)

I will also just raise here the idea that we should question the use of Thyroid Stimulating Hormone (TSH) as the ultimate measure of thyroid health as many thyroid sufferers do on various forums growing round the world. We need also to be measuring T4, but especially T3, and taking note that quite a substantial number of people with hypothyroidism do not really improve on T4 replacement alone. Australia used to add iodine to salt, but this was discontinued and tests for iodine are not even rebated, yet our country and our diets are still low in iodine. Few doctors even test for this. Iodine is not the only cause of hypothyroidism, but it is a common cause. Several books have been written by doctors about the need to increase the use of specific hormone testing for suspected thyroid disorders.

NOTES

[1]
I think that ANU Demography Crawford School Unit's professor Peter McDonald's 'coffin-shaped populations' is a case in point. Here is one of many examples: "This is a projection for Australia that leads to the 25 million population in 50 years time and close to zero growth subsequently. The essential difference between the two is that the Sydney population is younger. The Sydney population is beehive-shaped and the rest of Australia is somewhat coffin-shaped. As we shift Melbourne, Brisbane etc from the right side to the left side, this impression would become very pronounced. That is, a projection that provides a reasonable outlook for Australia is the sum of high population growth in the existing cities with considerable ageing and labour supply decline in the non-metropolitan regions. We need more work on this and we shall be doing this as a component of the AHURI study of future housing needs."

Professor McDonald seems to me to truly to believe that Australia must have a continuously growing population to fulfill a continuously industrialising economy based on youthful manpower. The growth lobby and its corporate press reward such theories and present their proponents in a very favourable light. That is why we hear so much from them and so little from the rest. How would a student in Professor McDonald's unit fare if he argued for a small population to keep essential resource costs low and wildlife corridors for native fauna? Would you even enroll in the Canberra Demography unit if you had those views?

This man also advises our ministers and people overseas, including Europe.

"Peter McDonald is Professor of Demography in the Crawford School. He is President of the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population for the years, 2010-2013 and is a Member of the Council of Advisers of Population Europe.

He is frequently consulted on the issue of population futures (causes, consequences and policies) by governments around the world, especially in Australia, Europe and East Asia. In 2008, he was appointed as a Member in the Order of Australia. He is Deputy Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence in Population Ageing Research. In 2012, he was appointed as an inaugural ANU Public Policy Fellow. He is a member of the Australian Ministerial Advisory Council on Skilled Migration. He has worked previously at the Australian Institute of Family Studies, the World Fertility Survey and the University of Indonesia." https://crawford.anu.edu.au/people/visitors/peter-mcdonald

[2] See Tony Boys, "How will Japan feed itself without fossil energy?" in Sheila Newman (Ed.) The Final Energy Crisis, 2nd Ed. 2018.

[3] See, Sheila Newman, The Growth Lobby in Australia and its Absence in France, Chapter 6, Thesis minus 6 appendices.

“We note your concerns” is a response that ABC critics are familiar with. It seems to mean, “We’ve ignored your arguments but made a small mark on the negative side of the “balance” tally.

On Fri, Mar 9, 2018 at 9:33 PM, David Macilwain wrote:

Dear Reeha,

As another writer and critic of the ABC’s unbalanced reporting of the war on Syria, Jeremy Salt has forwarded me your response to his complaint about Sophie McNeill’s recent report on Ghouta.

Jeremy shared his complaint with me at the time, and I endorse the points he made in their entirety, regarding both the true situation in Syria and Ghouta, and on the ABC’s consistent and seven-year long failure to present a balanced picture of the Syrian government’s war with foreign-backed Islamist terrorists.

Consequently I am bemused by the ABC’s response today. Taken at face value, it betrays an almost complete lack of understanding of the ‘geopolitics’ of the conflict, as well as the role that the ABC has played over the last seven years in helping to deceive and misinform the Australian public.

So serious is this failure, and that of all the other “Western mainstream” media organisations, that almost the whole of Western society, including leaders and commentators, NGOs and even the UN, have an idea about the war on Syria which is a total fabrication.

Put simply, – and I need to spell it out – the war ON Syria was started and fomented by the US and NATO governments in coordination with their local Middle Eastern allies – the Gulf Arab theocracies, Israel and Turkey. These countries and their intelligence agencies conspired to ship an arsenal of weapons into Syria, and jihadists from across the region, with the intention to destroy Syria’s secular government and replace it with a Western friendly puppet.

This criminal attack by “proxies” and mercenaries might not have succeeded in Syria, where there was little interest in removing the government, and certainly not by force. So the role played by some media networks, in particular Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya, and the collusion of Western media agencies such as the Guardian and BBC – and by association the ABC – was critical to creating support for this lethal invasion amongst those in the West who had some say in what their governments were doing.

The propaganda from Arabic media, including Al Jazeera before it was kicked out of Syria, was also important in persuading some Syrians that their own government was attacking them. Many Syrians who fled the country continue to believe this, even as support for their government and army by the majority who remained is at record levels.

That is the background to the war on Syria, but there are two particularly important aspects of the subsequent misreporting of the war – as “Civil war” for instance, or as some sort of sectarian war against Sunnis – that need special mention. These two things have recently come together in the incredible propaganda campaign over the Syrian Army’s operation to liberate Eastern Ghouta from its terrorist besiegers.

This ugly propaganda partnership is between the White Helmets and their “Chemical Weapons”. And it was perfectly illustrated in the scenes we saw – over and over again – of White Helmets hosing down children they claimed to have been affected by Sarin gas in Khan Shaikoun last year. This supposed attack is now thoroughly debunked, due to a complete lack of credible evidence either of Syrian airforce bombing or of proven Sarin contamination. While the UN made such claims, it refused to send an investigative team to the area – under control of Al Nusra terrorist groups – or respond adequately to Russia’s detailed criticism and protestations at the UN.

In fact, the most cursory viewing of the Khan Shaikoun footage – filmed by the White Helmets’ photographers and transmitted to Western media by unknown and unverified “activists”, would lead an uninformed – or un-misinformed – viewer to ask questions about its credibility. They might ask – and have – how the “White Helmets volunteers” seem unaffected by the Sarin contamination of their victims.

But if they know a little more, or do some simple research on the symptoms of Sarin poisoning, they wouldn’t ask this question; victims of Sarin and other nerve agents do NOT gasp for breath, because they cannot breathe. They also turn blue from lack of oxygen, in contrast to the rosy faces of these poor children, supposedly dying from Sarin exposure.

The well-informed viewer would then conclude – as I have and Jeremy Salt has, and thousands of observers and commentators in “non-Western” and alternative media have done – that both the White Helmets and their Sarin, and “Chlorine” attacks are a FRAUD. A criminal fraud, which has led to the deaths of tens and hundreds of thousands of innocent Syrians and Syrian defence forces by being endlessly repeated and echoed in Western media.

Even though these media organisations may not be intending to mislead, and may – like their audiences – genuinely believe that the White Helmets are a volunteer rescue organisation and that the Syrian government is killing its own people with chemical weapons – these media must hold some responsibility for the atrocious situation we now find ourselves in.

It will be a hard road back to truth and responsibility for the ABC and SBS, and their foreign media partners, but it is not too late to turn around and face reality. The consequences of not doing so are becoming increasingly severe.

Finally I would just like to address several points and claims that you made in your response to Jeremy Salt’s complaint.

You say that:

“As we have noted in our previous correspondence to you, the ABC has presented vast and comprehensive coverage of events in Syria. This coverage has included a broad and diverse range of perspectives over time, as required by the editorial policies.”

This beggars belief. “Vast and comprehensive coverage” that failed to inform your audience about the 10,000 strong “Army of Conquest” that was created by Saudi Arabia and Turkey in March 2015, and invaded Idlib province at a time when the Syrian army and its allies were finally making great progress to liberate the area from the clutch of insurgent groups. Now three years later, and countless thousands of deaths later, the Syrian army has driven the insurgents back to Idlib, with assistance from Russia.

“Comprehensive coverage” that somehow failed to tell your audience about the billion dollar Oil export business being run by Islamic State, in collusion with the US, Israel and Turkey, which was brought to an end by Russian bombs and cruise missiles? And that also failed to note how huge convoys of IS fighters and weapons had crossed the desert to reach and attack Palmyra without being stopped or attacked by US coalition forces?

A “diverse range of perspectives over time” that completely failed, over a very long time, to present the “perspective” of Syria’s legitimately elected government or that of the majority of its people? Their perspective on the foreign backed head-choppers of Al Nusra and Ahrar Al Sham, Jaish al Islam and Islamic State, is quite simple – they are all terrorists killing innocent Syrians, and if Western governments won’t cooperate in the joint operations with Russia, Iran and Hezbollah to drive them out and kill them, then they have no right to level any accusations against the Syrian government and its partners for acting in whatever way they see fit to defend their sovereign territory.

I’m afraid that the ABC’s response to this criticism is quite inadequate, and evidently a parody of truth. Citing two recent reports where there was mention of terrorist attacks on Damascus only highlights the absence of such a perspective from normal coverage. The titles of both reports focused on the usual half-truths about attacks on ‘rebel-held’ Ghouta by the Syrian army, misleading readers away from the reality – that the Syrian Army’s actions are a defensive response to the terrorists indiscriminate shelling of residential areas of Damascus.

It should also be borne in mind that Ms McNeill was not actually in Eastern Ghouta, so her sources are suspect. There is no credible information available on the number of children suffering or killed in Ghouta, and what information does reach us is mostly misinformation, from the White Helmets and their “anti-government” partners. When you have seen one fake “child rescued from the rubble” by these men you have seen them all, and should ask why it is that these bombed suburbs seem to have no inhabitants other than White Helmets “volunteers” and young children?

In consideration of my own criticism, which must also constitute a formal complaint, I would ask that you refer to my recent article posted on John Menadue’s blog “Pearls and Irritations”, which questions our alliance with America over the war on Syria, as well as the role and nature of the White Helmets.

http://johnmenadue.com/david-macilwain-standing-up-against-america/

I look forward to your considered response,

kind regards,

David Macilwain.
Sandy Creek, Victoria

"Before becoming an academic I was for many years a journalist, with the Herald and Age in Melbourne, with UPI and AP in London and with the 'daily star' in Beirut. Thus I have a reasonable idea of what journalistic standards should be, and again, in publishing Sophie O'Neill's report, 'bombed, starved, trapped: this could be the worst place on Earth to be a child', the ABC has again violated them." (Dr Jeremy Salt). Dr Salt is the author of The Unmaking of the Middle East. A History of Western Disorder in Arab Lands, University of California Press, 2008) See also https://www.candobetter.net/taxonomy/term/7778.

[Candobetter.net Editor Comment: We have introduced capitals in several instances where they were not included in the original comment, which was made via an online comment form.]

ABC program: news
Response required: Yes
Date of program: 11-Feb-2018
Contact type: Complaint
Location: O/S

Subject: ABC misreporting

Comments: Before becoming an academic I was for many years a journalist, with the 'Herald' and 'Age' in Melbourne, with UPI and AP in London and with the 'daily star' in Beirut. Thus I have a reasonable idea of what journalistic standards should be, and again, in publishing Sophie O'Neill's report, 'bombed, starved, trapped: this could be the worst place on Earth to be a child', the ABC has again violated them. I have written before about Ms O'Neill's 'reporting', specifically in connection with the 'Australian story' report from Madaya, a town held by one of the most vicious takfiri groups in the Syrian war, Ahrar al sham, responsible for many massacres, a fact she did not mention. Now she has done it again. Of course, the situation in eastern Ghouta is shocking, if no more shocking than any other part of Syria that has come under attack from these takfiri groups in the past seven years. As for being the 'worst' place on earth for children, other candidates would be Yemen, bombed by Saudi Arabia with the support of the U.S, or Gaza, starved and strangled by Israel. but let this slide for the moment. The reason for the misery in Eastern Ghouta is that the district has been infiltrated by takfiri groups you should have no hesitation in describing as terrorist. Fighting under the umbrella of Jaysh al Islam (the Army of Islam), they include Hayat al tahrir al sham (Free men of Syria) formerly Jabhat al nusra (Front of Victory), Al Qaida in Syria, which has been designated by the U.S. as a terrorist group; Ahrar al sham (Free men of Syria); and Faylaq al sham (Army corps of Syria). All of these groups have a long record of massacre behind them and all are committed to the same basic ideology as the Islamic state, which is to destroy the secular government in Damascus and replace it with a hardline Islamic regime that would extirpate all Shia and Alawi and would extinguish the civil rights Syrian women currently enjoy. Sophie O'Neill merely describes these groups as 'opposition' fighters, hiding a truth which your readers are surely entitled to know.

The Syrian government is doing what any government would be doing, which is trying to drive these people of Eastern Ghouta. O'Neill did not mention that these takfiris are constantly sending mortar shells into the heart of Damascus, killing many civilians, including children. She mentions being sent photos, which suggests to me that she is regarded as a useful propaganda conduit by the agents of these groups.

I note that you illustrated your article with a photo of the 'White Helmets' in action. This group is embedded with the takfiris, operates in no area that is not under their control and has been thoroughly exposed as a propaganda arm of the foreign governments that have orchestrated the war on Syria. Please, the ABC has a reputation to maintain, does it not? You are degrading it by publishing material like this. Your readers might swallow it because they don't know any better. Is this good enough for you?

yours

Jeremy Salt

Network - ABC Online
RecipientName - Audience & Consumer Affairs
Referrer - Complaint

ABC Response to Dr Jeremy Salt's complaint

From: ABC Corporate_Affairs11
Date: 9 March 2018 at 08:47
Subject: RE: abc misreporting

Dear Mr Salt,

Thank you for your email regarding the ABC News Digital story Syria’s Eastern Ghouta could be the worst place on Earth to be a child right now.

In accordance with the ABC's complaints handling procedures, your correspondence has been referred to Audience and Consumer Affairs, a unit separate to and independent of the content making areas of the ABC. Our role is to review and, where appropriate, investigate complaints alleging that ABC content has breached the ABC's editorial policies. The ABC's editorial policies can be found here: https://edpols.abc.net.au/.

Your comments and personal views have been noted, including your views on what should have been included in the piece and your personal views about the White Helmets. As we have noted in our previous correspondence to you, the ABC has presented vast and comprehensive coverage of events in Syria. This coverage has included a broad and diverse range of perspectives over time, as required by the editorial policies. This particular piece focused on the experiences of people, particularly children, currently in Eastern Ghouta.

The ABC has previously covered the make-up of the insurgents in Syria including the association of some to Al-Qaeda (including http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-02-08/syria-idlib-air-strikes-described-as-a-war-against-civilians/9408578). The ABC has covered insurgents attacking Damascus with civilian casualties (including http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-02-20/more-than-70-killed-in-rebel-held-ghouta-amid-un-warning/9463658).

Within the context of a piece focused on the ongoing challenges facing children in Eastern Ghouta, Audience and Consumer Affairs is satisfied with the level of detail provided. Furthermore, we note that the piece contributes to the ongoing diversity of perspectives shown across the ABC.

Having reviewed the piece, and with consideration for the additional information provided by ABC News, Audience and Consumer Affairs are satisfied the piece kept with the ABC’s editorial standards.

Nevertheless, your comments and views have been noted by our unit and ABC News.

Yours sincerely,

Reena Rihan

Audience and Consumer Affairs

I note that the ABC is planning to air Four Corners and Q&A programs on the issue of population and a ‘Big Australia’. The topic of a ‘Big Australia’ is a contentious issue in public debate. Several opinion polls show more than 50 percent of Australians believe Australia has enough people or should not grow any larger than 30 million people. On the other hand, the major political parties (including the Greens) are in lockstep marching to the tune of a Big Australia. Thus there is a major gap between elite opinion and the general public. In view of this the ABC has a special responsibility to ensure that its Editorial Policy number 4 — Impartiality and Diversity of Perspectives — is fully achieved in this case.

The question of Australia’s population size and a ‘Big Australia’ will be the subject of ABC Television Four Corners and Q&A programs on Monday 12 March 2018. For details see this post at the Q&A Facebook page.

Due to a virtual consensus among the major political parties (including the Greens) that a Big Australia is a Good Thing which must not be questioned, it is all that much harder to get any balance on this topic in the mainstream media, who tend to take their cues from the agendas of established political parties. It then becomes easy to portray concern about population and associated migrant intake issues as only that of a fringe group with racially motivated agendas, epitomized in parties such as Pauline Hanson One Nation. This deflection of serious debate on the topic suits very well the special interests such as real estate and construction which benefit from unending increase in our numbers — despite the fact that on a per capita basis, we are no better off — and in many ways we are worse off.

These upcoming ABC shows will be an important opportunity to ensure that there is some serious reporting and debate on this topic. I sent the following email to the ABC just in case they needed some reminding:

Hello

I note that the ABC is planning to air Four Corners and Q&A programs on the issue of population and a ‘Big Australia’. The topic of a ‘Big Australia’ is a contentious issue in public debate. Several opinion polls show more than 50 percent of Australians believe Australia has enough people or should not grow any larger than 30 million people. On the other hand, the major political parties (including the Greens) are in lockstep marching to the tune of a Big Australia. Thus there is a major gap between elite opinion and the general public. In view of this the ABC has a special responsibility to ensure that its Editorial Policy number 4 — Impartiality and Diversity of Perspectives — is fully achieved in this case.

The Q&A discussion ought to include discussion of the desirability of a Big Australia — as well as how (or whether) such growth could be actually be ‘managed’. There must be balance and representativeness in the range of views and expertise invited to be on the panel. Opponents of our current high rate of mass immigration (which fuels population growth) should not be stereotyped as racists and xenophobes — as is commonly done on the ABC.

It is also imperative that ABC journalists and interviewers have a clear understanding of the differences between the following four issues/questions:

1. the question of Australia’s desired population size (eg the desirability of a Big Australia)

2. the question of how or whether rapid population growth can be managed

3. the question of the success or failure of multiculturalism

4. the question of the treatment of ‘arrivals by boat’ (refugee claimants) — which incidentally have negligible impact on questions 1 and 2 above

The ABC can make a useful contribution to public understanding and debate by ensuring these issues are not conflated together and that each issue is clearly distinguished and considered on its merits.

There are any number of centrist, highly respected experts and commentators who oppose a Big Australia — for example Prof. Ian Lowe, William Bourke, Dr Jane O’Sullivan, Leith van Onselen, Mark O’Connor, Crispin Hull — just to name a few. It is to be hoped — given this view is held by a large section of the Australian community – that at least one representative of this general position will be included in both the Four Corners reportage and Q&A panel.

The question for the producers of Four Corners and Q&A is: given that this is such an important and contentious debate, will you select the panel in an impartial, balanced and fair way?

Peter G Cook, PhD

Dear Marina,

As producer of the segment this morning about the current campaign to liberate Eastern Ghouta from its terrorist besiegers, I would like to offer this alternative perspective on what is actually happening in Syria. I understand only too well that all Western governments, NGOs and UN organisations, including Amnesty International, speak with one voice, but they still present the situation in Damascus and its suburbs in completely misleading and false terms.

While these voices talk of a “humanitarian disaster”, and make many claims regarding deaths of children and attacks on “hospitals” and “Syrian civil defence”, their sources are not in any way trustworthy.

The armed groups who have occupied Damascus eastern suburbs since 2012, holding the local population under siege, are the very same groups who staged the so-called Sarin attack in Ghouta in 2013, distributing videos of kidnapped children they had themselves gassed through the sympathetic media networks supporting the Syrian insurgency.

Regardless of whether we believe this in the West, or dismiss it as propaganda from “Assad apologists” or “Kremlin Stooges”, the fact remains that the vast majority of Syrian citizens know it to be the case, along with most Russians, Iranians and Lebanese. Their media do not present videos produced by the “White Helmets” as credible evidence of crimes by the Syrian Army, but as evidence of the criminals behind the White Helmets organisation in Westminster and Washington.

And while our media and leaders just dismiss Russian opinion and expertise as invalid, and portray Russia’s role at the UN as criminal, it is only the media who actually believe this. There would not be an intelligence agency in the US/UK/French/Israeli/Saudi network who does NOT know the truth of what their countries are trying to do to Syria, which makes their crime in fomenting and sponsoring the war on Syria truly the crime of the century.

People close to Syria and Russia, including myself, have been trying to bring the truth to the attention of the media here for the last seven years, as it was apparent within weeks of the so-called uprising that it was not genuine and not supported by Syrians.

There are now many commentators and journalists presenting the truth in alternative internet sites in the West, and in public broadcasters in the ‘non-West’ such as on RT, Al Mayadeen, Press TV and Xinhua.net, and at some point the Western mainstream is going to have to come to terms with this.

But things don’t look good. Many people fear that a “World War” is imminent, because of the US and Israeli attacks on Syria, and the NATO moves in Ukraine. Given the US recent talk of using tactical nuclear strikes against conventional attacks, such a conflict will rapidly become an inferno.

We have reached a crisis point, but it will not be solved by UN meetings calling for ceasefires, or Amnesty calling out the alleged war crimes of America’s enemies. What must be called out is OUR OWN direct sponsorship of terrorist organisations in Iraq and Syria, including IS, to achieve our global strategic objectives.
These objectives have absolutely nothing to do with “democracy and freedom” or “responsibility to protect”, as the war on Syria so amply demonstrates. This war would have been finished in 2013 had the West’s media organisations done their job, and exposed the sponsors of the Sarin attack – Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the US.
It is these countries, including all their partners – Australia, UK, France, Qatar, UAE, who hold responsibility for the half million deaths in Syria, and the swath of destruction across the region, NOT the Syrian government, nor its allies, Hezbollah, Russia and Iran and Iraq.

Veteran correspondent Robert Fisk is one journalist who has learnt the lesson that the mainstream needs to learn, and wrote this particularly accurate article about the campaign on Ghouta yesterday.

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/ghouta-siege-syria-death-toll-civilians-armed-attack-rebel-aleppo-latest-a8221086.html

I would like to think that all at the ABC read this and think about it, as they – and probably quite innocently – shield the real criminals from the public’s view. Fisk used to regularly get interviews – with Fran Kelly amongst many others – on the ABC, perhaps until he started showing sympathy towards the Syrian army. It is urgent that his view is now shared with your audience again, along with that of many other investigative journalists and commentators who write in the alternative press, and are frequently interviewed on its programs.

I hope you can bring this to the attention of your colleagues, and senior staff.

I welcome your response.

kind regards,

David Macilwain,
Sandy Creek, Victoria, 3695

Australian Dick Smith, techie, environmentalist who founded National Geographic, and millionaire, has recently attempted to educate Australians about the wealthy population growth lobby in their country, which benefits from Australia's rapid immigration-fueled population growth whilst the rest of us pay the cost. To do this, he has run his own expensive campaing, including taking out expensive ads in newspapers. Among other things, Smith has decribed Australia's public media, the ABC, as biased in its failure to fairly report the costs of population growth. We on candobetter.net cannot help but be impressed at his community spirit. Are Dick Smith’s ads having an effect on population reporting further afield? Maybe. Here's an example of what we hope may be a new trend in truthful reporting on the matter by the ABC.

Usual ABC ideology

As everyone knows, migrants don’t take jobs they make jobs. Migrants provide employers with welcome additional labour, but somehow the usual laws of supply and demand do not apply here.

This increased supply of labour never reduces the value of labour. It never harms the negotiating position of workers seeking better wages and conditions, or their chance of getting a job. Only a nasty rather “racist” person could doubt these self-evident truths, which seem to be well known to all ABC journalists—or maybe it is simply a well known fact that you won’t survive in the ABC news area if you question these assumptions. Yet perhaps some of the ABC’s business reporters are getting tired of keeping up this pretence.

Is a chink of light creeping by the ABC censors after all?

On 22 December 2017 the ABC’s business reporter Carrington Clarke nonchalantly filed a piece titled, Australian wages stall, as immigration soars.

How can such heresy be allowed?

According to Clarke, the 1,000 extra people being added to our population every day doesn't necessarily make life any better for the people who live in the country and arguably, makes it a lot worse.

This are more people competing for jobs and housing, pushing down wages and pushing up property prices. Australia's population growth is extraordinarily high when compared to our global peers, at 1.6 per cent per year. This is more than double the rate of the US, nearly three times the rate of the UK, and four times the rate of France.
On current projections, Australia will hit 38 million people by 2050.

This high rate of population growth is driven mostly by high immigration. Net migration was 245,400 people over the past 12 months — which was a 27.1 per cent increase over the year before.
That's more than the total population of Hobart in new migrants coming to the country in a single year.

Huge supply of imported workers add to Australia's high unemployment rate

This is also a huge additional supply of workers (although a proportion would be children or the elderly). The simple economic rule of supply and demand means these new workers effectively lower the price of labour, which means lower wages.

(On that last statement, see Clarke’s article 2 days earlier http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-01-19/high-immigration-masks-australian-economic-decline/8193628 with its subsections “Population growth distorting housing, labour markets”, and “Bigger pie, but more mouths eating from it”. Clarke quotes “Gareth Aird, Senior Economist at the Commonwealth Bank” saying “if you had a lower immigration rate at a time where there is spare capacity in the labour market that's not a bad thing.” Clarke concludes:

"The reason why many people feel that they haven't benefitted from the Australia's long stretch of economic expansion, is quite simply because they haven't. Their pay packets haven't gotten bigger while the costs of essential goods like shelter have risen. High migration makes it nearly impossible for Australia to fall into recession. The economy keeps getting bigger just because there are more people operating in it. It's great for business, because it keeps wages low and there's more people to buy stuff from them. It's great for governments because it means economic growth looks better than it otherwise would. But it isn't necessarily good for ordinary workers."

Now back to Clarke’s 22/12/2017 article. He continues:

"Australia is not currently anywhere near full employment. At 5.4 per cent unemployment, Australia is well above the US which is sitting at 4.1 per cent and the UK at 4.2 per cent.
There are currently 707,000 unemployed Australians. These are people currently looking for work. But that's only part of the story as there are currently about 1.1 million Australians who are 'underemployed'. These are people who are currently working (perhaps as little as one hour a week) but want to work more hours. So the number of Australians currently looking for more work is 1.8 million.

There is still a huge amount of 'slack' in the labour market which is keeping people from getting a decent pay rise. Companies are much less likely to offer big pay rises to workers if they know there's a big supply of other workers who are desperate for a job or more hours. . . . [The resulting ] economic 'growth' hasn't made a sizeable difference to the amount of Australians unemployed and has left us with the worst wages growth since the 1960s.

Companies are benefiting from this huge increase in workers and consumers. New migrants buy more things, which helps keep the tills ringing. And new migrants also mean more potential workers, which keeps wages down. This can be seen in the most recent profit figures, with companies experiencing a 27 per cent increase in profits in a year while workers received less than 2 per cent in wage increases. With 1.8 million people out of work or looking for more hours and 250,000 new migrants moving to the country each year, there's very little incentive for bosses to give workers a big rise.

Which is why, despite '1,000 new jobs a day', workers are getting a raw deal."

An effective declaration of war on Russia in Syria by the US over the last two weeks has gone unnoticed in Western media. How long can they keep this deception going?

An American tradition

“Now to Syria” – says the presenter of “AM”, as if it were the most natural and obvious subject to report on, despite the stunning silence of the previous two weeks.

Could it be that we are about to hear an update on the momentous developments across the country, which only went unreported because of the crisis over North Korea and various natural and man-made disasters around the planet?

Perhaps I really thought so for a moment, reasoning that our blinkered media were going to have to find a way to tell us sooner or later that the US just effectively declared war on Russia. No-one who read the statements from the Russian Ministry of Defence could doubt the seriousness of the situation, following the “Joint” terrorist operation in Idlib that nearly took 30 Russian Military Police hostage. The Ministry had been unusually blunt and uncompromising, directly accusing the US of collaboration with Al Qaeda/Nusra, apparently in a desperate attempt to disrupt the Russian-Syrian advance across the Euphrates in Deir al Zour.

With each day that passed since the September 19th operation, and the subsequent dramatic destruction of the terrorist army and its extensive military hardware, I grew more incredulous at the media silence, seeing not one report on radio or TV or print media in Australia – in common apparently with other Western countries. Even the dramatic shots of cruise missiles emerging from Russian subs in the Mediterranean failed to grab the attention of this media machine.

Yet this was the “news from Syria” according to Australia’s government broadcaster the ABC, and broadcast four days after the Idlib attack:

SABRA LANE: “In Syria the race to control the oil-rich east of the country is gathering pace, and the risk of conflict between Russia and the US along with it.

The eastern province of Deir al Zour is the largest remaining stronghold of the Islamic State group and US backed militias are in competition with the Syrian government to lay claim to the turf. It’s a competition which has brought them within just a few kilometres of each other.”

This “TURF” is actually part of Syria, and can’t be “claimed” or “controlled” by anyone other than Syria’s legitimately elected representatives, the Syrian government. Nor can the oil beneath the desert “turf” be removed and sold without the cooperation and approval of the Syrian people to whom it belongs. Such a detail should hardly need explaining.

But expanding on the “may the best force win” theme, the ABC’s Middle East “correspondent” Matt Brown continued:

“In that section near the Iraqi border still held by IS, there’s plenty of Oil, making it a valuable prize for whoever gets there first, and the commander of the SDF in Deir al Zour province, Ahmed Abu Ghawla, has told the ABC he intends to do just that with the help of US airpower”-

(Abu Ghawla, in Arabic) - “We have an agreement with the international coalition to liberate territories from the Terrorists” he says, - “If any force bombs our SDF positions the agreement is that the Coalition will defend us – they’ll retaliate with air-power, and we’ll fight back on the ground.”

Brown’s presentation of the “Deir al Zour Military Council” and its Sunni Arab commander would have sounded fair enough to the ordinarily ignorant ABC listener, who would assume the “Syrian Democratic Forces” are a legitimate force who deserve a reward for driving IS out of their country. Yet the title is an anachronism; not only is the SDF almost entirely Kurdish, but it has now moved into territories where Kurds were a minority.

Moon of Alabama had this to say on Ahmed Abu Ghawla:

“The local criminal Ahmad Abu Khawla, who had earlier fought for ISIS, was suddenly installed as commander of a newly invented "Deir Ezzor Military Council", set up under U.S. special force control.”

This unhealthy collaboration was confirmed following Russian satellite photos of US-SDF vehicles in IS occupied areas north east of Deir al Zour. A week has now gone by since Matt Brown’s report with no further mention of Syria despite another even more alarming event - the targeted assassination of Russian General Asapov in Deir al Zour.

Moon of Alabama again:

“Last night a Russian three-star general and two colonels were killed in a mortar attack while they visited a Syrian army headquarters in Deir Ezzor:

“Lieutenant-General Valery Asapov, of the Russian armed forces, has been killed after coming under shelling from Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) militants near Deir ez-Zor”, the Russian Defense Ministry has announced.

In its statement, the ministry said that Asapov was at a command outpost manned by Syrian troops, assisting commanders in the liberation of the city of Deir ez-Zor.

Even had his death been a “random” event it should have merited some media attention, but the reality was far more serious, as explained by Moon of Alabama – it was undeniably a specifically targeted operation for which only US coalition special forces could have been responsible. (In the context of this crime and the ABC’s reports it must also be remembered that Australia is an integral part of the US coalition, both in aiding and abetting the US airstrikes and in carrying out strikes of its own.)

Lieutenant General Asapov was overseeing the crucially important bridging of the Euphrates, which the US and its local militias sought unsuccessfully to prevent. Betraying its long-term malicious intent in Eastern Syria, US coalition planes had bombed four bridges over the Euphrates exactly a year ago, and just two weeks after their lethal attack on the SAA base protecting Deir al Zour airport.

That attack, and Russia’s conclusions on the obvious collaboration between US forces and IS, combine with these events a year later to form extraordinary bookends in the US war against Syria and her allies. And it is a year distinguished by the even more incredible maintenance of a false narrative right across the Western media that has permanently discredited so many of those once-respected organisations.

The problem of maintaining this false narrative must be increasingly difficult, and necessitate the creation of new false stories or the resuscitation of old ones, as happened with the latest “news from Syria”. A video report on Al Jazeera was typical in its presentation of this story – of “civilian deaths in Idlib from Russian and Syrian bombing”- only with a nice twist.

For Russia and Syria the gloves are clearly now off, both in Deir al Zour and in the “de-confliction zone” around Idlib, following the joint US-Al Qaeda operations in both areas. The scale and success of their attacks on some of the most notorious centres of White Helmets-Al Nusra operations such as Khan Shaikoun and Urm al Kubra has evidently disabled the insurgents’ media operations, forcing Al Jazeera to use footage from a week earlier. Clearly marked “September 19”, this video actually showed insurgents under attack following their offensive against Russia’s military police, and not – as they stated – the “Russian bombing of civilians in schools and hospitals”.

This dichotomy between “the two sides” (which are fairly clearly delineated now I think) appears to be terminal. For those in the West – who far outnumber us in terms of control over Global presence and influence – to accept and cooperate with Russia and her allies, simply requires too great a shift in thinking.

Article first published on Russia Insider at http://russia-insider.com/en/politics/foiling-us-plans-steal-syrias-oil/ri21100?ct=t(Russia_Insider_Daily_Headlines11_21_2014)&mc_cid=ea0b0a445e&mc_eid=affffcca81 on September 30, 2017.

Dick Smith has started a campaign supporting the ABC TV news and current affairs as his favourite network, but wants them to show more balance when it comes to reporting population issues.

The Dick Smith Fair Go group launched a campaign on 27 September 2017, with newspaper advertisements in The Australian, the Canberra Times, the Land, The West Australian and others.

In the advertisements, Dick Smith quotes respected Canberra academic Mark O’Connor and his criticism of ABC TV news and current affairs for not showing balance when it comes to the population issue.

Dick Smith says, “A number in the media have criticised me personally for my stand, however I am just communicating what other experts are saying, but get no coverage on.”

“The ABC is my favourite television network, I watch it more than any other, and it was only after I read Mark O’Connor’s book Overloading Australia that I realised that ABC TV news and current affairs had been biased when it comes to covering the population issue,” Dick Smith said.

Dick Smith says “Our democracy can only work effectively if there is fair and open discussion on these issues. I have always been pro-immigration – it is what has made Australia such a fantastic place today. However I believe we should have a population plan, and therefore an immigration plan.”

“My plan is to get one of the major parties to have a population plan before the next election. Over 80% of Australians want this,” said Dick Smith.

When I lodged my nomination as a candidate for the SA House of Assembly seat of Fisher 2 years ago, the very first communication I received was a letter from the ABC telling me I would not get any coverage for my campaign. This was despite the fact that I was the nominated candidate for a registered political party with over 300 members, and I was spending about $6000 of my savings on campaign expenses and nomination fees." [...] "the Earth adds approx. 225,000 mouths to feed EVERY DAY. Australia adds approx. 1000 to its population each day. The implications of this are enormous, and yet it is very clear to me that the ABC soft pedals the matter. To be more specific, it is very common that, when an issue of national importance such as housing affordability comes up, there is very little mention of the influence population growth is having on the matter. The interviewers commonly host guests from the property industry to put their views, but people from such bodies as Sustainable Population Australia never seem to be asked to comment."

Mr Justin Milne
ABC Chairman
Box 9994
Sydney NSW 2001

Dear Chairman

I am writing to you instead of ABC Management because I lack confidence that the content of this letter will be taken seriously by that management. This lack of confidence is based on the fact that a complaint I lodged with the ABC in September 2015 was not answered until April of the following year, and then only after I wrote a personal letter to every member of the ABC Board.

There are 2 matters I wish to raise - firstly, ABC policy regarding airtime given to state election candidates. And secondly, ABC bias in relation to covering the issue of population growth in Australia.

Airtime given to election candidates

When I lodged my nomination as a candidate for the SA House of Assembly seat of Fisher 2 years ago, the very first communication I received was a letter from the ABC telling me I would not get any coverage for my campaign. This was despite the fact that I was the nominated candidate for a registered political party with over 300 members, and I was spending about $6000 of my savings on campaign expenses and nomination fees.

However, in the lead up to that campaign, Matt and Dave on 891 Adelaide chose to interview a selection of candidates for Fisher on their morning program. They comprised Liberal, Labour, Greens and an Independent (Woolyat), whose particular talent was sidestepping every question put to him about controversial issues. And, when I attempted to access ABC talk back, I was afforded little respect or opportunity to put my case before being cut off.

Around this time, the Adelaide Advertiser was kind enough to publish a letter from me that pointed out the ABC was not willing to give me any airtime, and yet Zakky Mullah, a convicted criminal, was given a platform on Q and A to push his twisted agenda.

Chairman, myself and members of our party (Stop Population Growth Now) intend to run in the SA elections in March next year. I request that you direct ABC management to give our party (and other registered parties) sufficient air time to promote our policies, which, by the way, are not racist - they are based on the absolute necessity to create a society that is sustainable and where preservation of our environment is regarded as critical.

ABC bias in relation to population issues

ABC records will indicate I have complained to your organization about this subject before.

Chairman, the Earth adds approx. 225,000 mouths to feed EVERY DAY. Australia adds approx. 1000 to its population each day. The implications of this are enormous, and yet it is very clear to me that the ABC soft pedals the matter. To be more specific, it is very common that, when an issue of national importance such as housing affordability comes up, there is very little mention of the influence population growth is having on the matter. The interviewers commonly host guests from the property industry to put their views, but people from such bodies as Sustainable Population Australia never seem to be asked to comment. It is completely unreasonable to believe that adding 1000 persons per day to Australia’s population is not going to have a very significant effect on housing prices. And there are many other areas where population growth has a major impact. The Adelaide Advertiser was kind enough to publish a letter from me a few weeks ago in which I pointed out that, on current growth rates, the population of Australia will grow from approx 24.5 million today to approx 32.5 million by 2040, an increase of 33%, and that all these extra people would need power, when it is clear we are having problems catering for our existing population, let alone provide for such a huge increase. The commercial media is willing to give publicity to this fact, but where is the ABC on that hugely significant matter.

Recently the DRUM and Media Watch have been borderline contemptuous of the efforts of Dick Smith, who, with his own money, is trying to bring about a proper debate on population growth. Well, Mr Chairman, the ABC is not helping such a debate. Yet when a detainee on Manus so much as stubs a toe, the ABC is all over it, with, I might add, a very clear pro refugee bias.

Please do not assume I am against everything the ABC does. The ABC has some wonderful talent (Anthony Green, Dr Norman Swan to name 2), and I cannot wait for each new episode of UTOPIA. But there is definitely bias in some areas, and it needs to be rooted out.

Chairman, I am a 74 years old senior citizen, with no criminal record (unlike Mullah). I believe I am a respected member of my local community. I have worked (and am still working) paying taxes for 57 years. My taxes have supported “my ABC” for all that time. Why do I feel that my views supporting zero population growth are ignored by your organization. I am not being given a voice by the ABC, yet the commercial media is often willing to publish my letters and take my calls (Jeremy Cordeux gave me 20 minutes on Radio 5AA some time ago), and Leon Byner of the same station is always willing to talk to me. This is so even though it can be argued the interests of commercial media are not served by stopping population growth.

I respectfully request you and your Board to consider this letter, and act accordingly.

Bob Couch

Tonight (11 September 2017) the ABC’s Media Watch program contained a section in which presenter (Paul Barry) attacked Dick Smith’s views on population and specifically Dick Smith’s complaints about the ABC’s refusal to cover the issue of Australia’s rampant population growth. Yet for much of the time he did not defend the ABC. He did not answer points Dick Smith makes at https://www.dicksmithfairgo.com.au/abc-tv-news-current-affairs-bias-growth/or that William Lines and I have made at https://www.dicksmithfairgo.com.au/abc-bias-chapter-overloading-australia/ about ABC bias. Instead, Paul Barry seemed more interested in attacking Dick Smith. [Mark O'Connor is a well known Australian poet and co-author with Bill Lines of Overloading Australia.]

Abandoning the standards Barry and Media Watch normally hold other journalists to, Barry made no attempt to deal with the relevant issues. He did not, for instance, attempt to argue that the amount of space that ABC TV news programs devote to Australia’s extraordinary rate of population growth (we are growing at a rate that would be high even in the Third World) is in proportion with this issue’s importance. Much less did Barry offer evidence or statistics to show that the ABC gives fair or equal space to critics of these very high population growth rates or of the very high immigration rates that drive this growth.

He made no attempt to compare the space and time given to population with that given to other major drivers of contemporary history’s problems, such as “the economy”, or climate change. Nor did he answer the points so powerfully made by Ross Gittins and others about the need to stop pretending that high immigration is any clear benefit to Australia. See for instance https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2017/09/bob-brown-laura-tingle-and-ross-gittins-back-dick-smith/

Instead Barry launched an ad hominem attack on Dick Smith, presenting him as an attention seeker. Perhaps Barry thought attack was the ABC’s best method of defence.

He claimed Dick was unreasonably aggrieved at not having his point of view represented on ABC’s program The Drum (where a group of population growth advocates was recently lined up to belittle Dick’s case, with some making misleading statements about him supporting Pauline Hanson). See https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2017/09/abc-drum-counters-immigration-bias-claim-bias/ Yet if they did not want Dick on their panel, why did they not ask Ross Gittins or Bob Carr or Tim Flannery or Ian Lowe etc etc ? Why only pro-growth panellists?

Barry cannot plead ignorance on this subject. The failure of ABC TV news programs to give appropriate space to the case against our government’s policies of pursuing high population growth has been repeatedly brought to his attention at Media Watch, and he has always refused to cover the issue.

If this refusal to deal with an issue that goes to the heart of Media Watch’s charter (as indeed of the ABC’s) was not based on a careful examination of the case, then it was irresponsible. But if it was based on a careful examination which showed that the ABC’s coverage had not in fact been too small and was not unbalanced, then Barry would tonight have been able to produce hard evidence and statistics to disprove Dick Smith’s criticisms. He would not have needed ad hominem attacks, or puns on Dick’s name.

The nearest Barry came to a defence of the ABC was in pointing out that back in 2010 (that’s 7 whole years ago, Paul, and for an issue that its crucial to a dozen news items every week!) the ABC did run a documentary on population called (indeed) Dick Smith’s Population Puzzle followed by a debate on Q&A.

But Barry failed to mention that at the last minute Q&A insisted that their panel would not contain any clear critics of Australia’s rapid-population-growth policies, thus once again disenfranchising the majority of Australians from the debate. Instead there would be a “sub-panel” (which did contain Tim Flannery) who would be allowed to make a brief statement each but not take place in the subsequent debate. (I think I have remembered this correctly. I do remember that it all seemed bizarre at the time. Media Watch did not, of course, comment back then upon this oddity.)

So instead of a normal Q&A debate, we were treated to an interchange of views between types like Tony Shepherd and John Elliott, whose line was that population growth is needed for business: end of story. For “contrast” these were put in discussion with an utterly pro-growth mayor who wanted us to know about the heart-pangs that he and (he claimed) the fellow citizens of his town suffered daily at being only the second biggest town in their state! (At least that’s what I can remember from 7 years ago. It was certainly not a fair or balanced debate, if a debate at all).

Barry might have found a better example if he had mentioned that back in January 2010, as described on p. 162 of my and William Lines’s book Overloading Australia, the ABC’s 7.30 Report allowed Matt Peacock to make a series of 4 segments on the deep disquiet felt by many scientists and social commentators at Australia’s rate of population growth. But to use this example Barry would have had to explain why the ABC has never since allowed Peacock or others to revisit that issue in similar depth. In fact since then many of those whom Peacock found willing to speak out in 2010 have fallen silent, realising that there is little chance of getting a fair hearing.

I think we have the right to be angry about this. ABC TV news has never provided adequate or balanced coverage of Australia’s population debate; and now that Dick Smith has had the courage to put it on the spot, it is flailing around and trying to defend itself with ad hominem attacks.

Mark O’Connor

Subsequent to Dick Smith's complaints to the ABC about bias towards the growth lobby on the subject of population, on 11 September 2017, Paul Barry, of ABC Media Watch, launched what many thought was a personal attack on Smith, in lieu of dealing fairly with the vital issues at hand. Dr John Coulter (former Senator and leader of the Democrats) wrote the following complaint to Media Watch, where he protests at the treatment of Dick Smith by Media Watch and documents a number of instances of pro-population-growth bias in the ABC. You can also read some a few comments published by Media Watch on this issue here: http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/transcripts/s4732374.htm.

Dear Media Watch,
[11 September 2017]

I was quite shocked by your program last evening re coverage of Dick Smith’s attempts to get ‘growth’ both population and economic on to the ABC’s agenda. Unlike your usual, more dispassionate reports you seemed to be more intent on disparaging Dick Smith rather than dealing with the importance of his claims as to the overarching importance of both aspects of growth as the drivers of our unsustainable trajectory and the fact, yes fact, that the ABC has excluded these things from its main-stream news items.

I wrote to you about this back in March and received an acknowledgement but nothing more. Below is some of the content of that letter.

But to bring this right up to date, just this morning there was extensive coverage of the problems with the supply of electricity into the mid-term future. But not a single mention of the fact that Federal Government policy is to add an additional one million people, all needing electricity every five years into the indefinite future.

Is this really an irrelevant ‘fact’? Is it not an important ‘fact’ to bring into this discussion? In every other sphere of public discussion both supply and demand are considered the basic elements of economics 101. Yet in the provision of electricity services, affordable housing, education, hospitals and medical services, roads and transport, etc etc the demand side caused by deliberate population growth through immigration is excluded by the ABC.

On the economic growth side the ABC repeatedly provides data on the growth of GDP but with few exceptions fails to provide the figures on per capita GDP growth which is much much smaller because of the very high level of immigration. Nor does it mention that included in the GDP figures are large amounts spent on attempts to keep infrastructure up to providing for the expanding population. None of these costs, which are added to GDP, improve the lot of existing Australians. It’s not surprising that very many Australians feel they are going backwards – because they are. Or that the Productivity Commission found only marginal economic benefits from immigration and much of that benefit going to the recently arrived.

None of this is to indicate racism. This is purely to do with numbers and how best to build an environmentally sustainable Australia in an environmentally sustainable world. Note that the Global Footprint Network has recently released its figures which show that Australians have the highest per capita environmental impact in the world. We would need 5.2 Earths if all were to live like Australians. Yet all our political parties seek to increase both population and per capita consumption. And the ABC uses language in its coverage of these things as, for example, South Australia ‘falling behind.

These footprint figures link Australians to the rest of the world and how best we can assist other nations to find their own unique path to a sustainable future. With 80+ million refugees and displaced persons in the world and with fertility rates in many middle-east and sub-Saharan Africa very high it seems self-evident that Australia could do much more by way of foreign aid, especially slanting that aid toward family planning, contraception and raising the standard of health of women. Yet Australia has cut its foreign aid program and the ABC has not picked up on the central role of foreign aid to assist women in the ways mentioned. Indeed a number of programs from Sally Sara and others have ignored the central role of high fertility in worsening the plight of people from Yemen to South Sudan. I am associated with an organisation called Population Media Centre which operates in over 50 countries and which concentrates specifically on raising the health of women. It uses long running radio soapies to raise awareness. I have several times urged programs such as Foreign Correspondent and Sally Sara specifically to make a program about the exciting and successful work of PMC in Ethiopia for example, but to no avail.

Below is some or all of the letter I wrote to you back in March:

9th March [2017] letter to media watch.

For example, last week in Saturday Extra a long interview regarding the plight of refugees in Sudan failed to even mention population growth as a driver of this and similar distressing situations across much of the world, especially the middle east and throughout Africa. Population growth is clearly going to make the present look like a picnic compared with the inevitable future. By not dealing with population and implying that the real need is for short-term aid rather than family planning, contraception availability, education and a rise in the standard of living and equality of women, such programs will make the future worse than it needs to be. In short, such programs will increase the totality of human suffering.

See the 2 minute video from the UN on the plight across the Sahel at http://oasisinitiative.berkeley.edu/news/ [Embedded below.]

This item on Saturday Extra was not isolated. A week earlier on a different program a similar account from another refugee camp in Africa failed to mention population growth as a factor.
12th November 2016, "What keeps me at wake at night."

This program on water began with the statement that water was a limited resource but that demand was increasing. It identified the limits on water supply as underpinning several of the areas in turmoil in the middle east, especially Syria. It touched on the appalling conditions in Yemen, specifically dealing with declining water per capita but again failed to mention the very high fertility rate in Yemen or any of the other middle east countries which appear on the nightly ABC TV news showing very large numbers of children but with never a comment on the size of the population or the fact that the high fertility rate will exacerbate the water shortage per capita. It is not a water shortage but a longage of people. This is the point that the ABC repeatedly misses. The standard analysis by ABC journalists as to what ails many of the middle-east countries is presented in political and religious conflict terms; never does it point to the underlying drivers: too many people trying to derive resources, including water and food, from a finite environment.

Last evening (27th March) on Lateline Jeremy Fernandez interviewed HRH Haya Bint al Hussein of Jordan who is in Australia in her role as assisting international refugees and speaking with Australia's Foreign Minister. Princess Haya made the remarkable claim that the world produces three times as much food as needed. This went unchallenged. She was not asked a single question about the very high fertility rates in middle eastern countries and how this was impacting (what is usually called the shortage of food and water but is really) the longage of people. Note that almost every news item that covers the middle eastern refugee situation speaks of families of 4, 6 and 8 children and every video clip shows a preponderance of children. There is no shortage of evidence. She was not asked a single question on family planning or use of contraception.

This morning (28th March) Fran Kelly also interviewed the princess and again there was a complete absence of any questions about the very high fertility rates in Middle east countries, what her charities might be doing about this, about Trump's change to foreign aid specifically with respect to family planning clinics providing abortion advice or services and whether she would be asking the Australian Foreign Minister for additional foreign aid to counter this deficit. Women's standing in Jordan was touched on but only with respect to the number of women in significant positions in government and society.

28th March ABC RN Drive with Patricia Karvelas.
Interview with three interviewees on housing affordability. First comment by first interviewee was that it was a matter of both supply and demand and there was a gap. Karvelas did not pick up on the demand side throughout the interview. She identified ‘the elephant in the room’ as negative gearing but failed to identify that 60% of demand is being fed by high immigration and that many have identified this as a very significant factor in housing affordability. The first interviewer mentioned immigration in his closing remarks but no one picked up on this remark of this factor.

24th March. Stan Grant interviewed Dick Smith in a setting of a Sydney market on the evening Link program on ABC TV.
This part of the program was said to be about population and Australia’s immigration intake. However the context set by Stan Grant was that the size of a sustainable population can be determined by public opinion and Stan kept asking leading questions of those in the market suggesting that any reduction in immigration would be detrimental to their business. Stan could not be more wrong in his assumption. Finding a sustainable population size for Australia is no more a matter of public opinion than finding the amount of greenhouse gas emissions that can be allowed without invoking climate change, or the number of sheep that can be kept permanently in a paddock without overgrazing. These are all matters in which there is good and essential science underpinning consideration of these matters but Stan consistently talked over Dick and did not allow him to advance any of them.
31st March. The Drum. A segment on population that contained no person or mention of environmental sustainability in relation to population growth. Thus, claims that we need population growth, that it was inevitable, that growth was wonderful, that it benefited the economy, that government could do nothing to limit population growth, that Japan was shrinking and we don’t want to go down that path were all left to stand as truth whereas every single on of these claims can be refuted with supported evidence. The selection of such a panel without an alternative voice shows bias.

6th , 7th , 10th April. Three sessions on RN on almost successive days dealing with aspects of housing affordability but none mentioning population growth or immigration.

6th April. Interview with respect to the role of transport development as a way of alleviating the problem of housing affordability (Marion Tell). This was based around a talk by Phillip Lowe, Reserve Bank Governor. Lowe had mentioned population as a driver of housing unaffordability but this was not taken up by Fran Kelly. Together with the other programs not mentioning population growth and immigration this seems a quite deliberate omission.

7th April. Interview with MP, Sarah Henderson who claimed that improving rail links to regional centres would improve housing affordability. No questions asked about population growth or immigration intake.

10th April. Interview with Saul Eslake about use of superannuation as a way of boosting housing supply but again no mention of population growth of the size of the immigration intake.

17th April. Patricia Karvelas interviewing Matt Canavan. Long interview on a number of matters but touching on housing affordability. Canavan mentions population increase and how it is causing problems in Sydney and Melbourne but then provides a solution in opening up more regional centres especially in north Queensland. Patricia does not suggest that perhaps the problem might be the increase in population caused largely by high immigration over which the Federal Government has control.

Finally a search across the ABC from September 2016 to today (19th April, 2017) failed to find a single ABC reference to population increase/ immigration and housing affordability. Indeed there is not a single reference to any impact on any aspect of infrastructure failure and the increase in population being driven by very high immigration.

Kindly and patriotic Australian businessman, Dick Smith, has been very poorly treated by the ABC on episode 158 its The Drum program. This is a very serious problem because, in mistreating Dick Smith, the ABC misinforms Australians on a subject of vital and democratic importance. The ABC seems now undifferentiated from the commercial TV channels with regard to reporting on population. Apparently the ABC has actually banned Dick Smith from the program. The letter inside, from Dick Smith to Ms Julia Baird, the Presenter of The Drum, asks for right of reply. We have embedded Dick Smith's video ad at the beginning of the text so you can judge for yourself whether Ms Baird has a leg to stand on. To us it is obvious that what has caused the media to go after Dick Smith is the fact that he has linked growthist population policy to Australia's reigning politicians and they are going to try to destroy him.

Dick Smith Fair Go 'Grim Reaper' TV Ad - 1min from Dick Smith Fair Go on Vimeo.

7 September 2017

Julia Baird Presenter The Drum ABC

Dear Julia

RE: CONTINUING BIAS ON THE ABC

What an outrageous segment on The Drum last night misrepresenting my views on population growth and immigration. This segment did everything to confirm that Mark O’Connor’s chapter in his book Overloading Australia entitled ‘Media bias and ABC blues’ is correct.

Your researchers didn’t even make the most basic enquiries by lifting the phone and talking to me about the statements that were attributed to me.

I note you started the segment with a piece from another TV channel with the large text “Anti immigration ad.” In fact, I have never had an anti-immigration ad.

I spent $1 million on a “Grim Reaper” style advertising campaign explaining that when politicians say growth, they actually mean endless growth. This will either result in growing inequality, or possibly terrible consequences for our society.

Those views are not mine alone, but reflect the views of many educated people from around the world.

The reason I have never run and anti-immigration ad is that I am pro-immigration. I always have been. It is the reason Australia is such a fantastic country.

Yes, upon advice from experts, I believe we should return to the long-term average of about 70,000 per year – as I’m told this will mean there is a greater chance for a sustainable future, and proper full-time careers for our children and grandchildren.

70,000 per year is approximately the immigration number when Paul Keating was Prime Minister, and I’m told is high per capita by world standards.

I have consistently called for a substantial increase in the humanitarian intake. This would be clear if any of your researchers had even bothered to glance at the Fair Go manifesto, or if you had given the panelists the document to look at.

Your segment went downhill from there. The erroneous caption “anti-immigration ad” confirmed exactly what I had been told by politicians about the ABC. They have said to me:

“Dick, you are absolutely right. We need a population policy, but if I ever mentioned it I would be crucified by the ABC. They would immediately link my comment to being opposed to immigration…”

Not at any time during the whole segment did you actually discuss what I am on about. That is, it is not possible to have endless growth in a finite world.

Amazingly, your researchers or producers didn’t even bother to brief Alan Kirkland, the CEO of Choice, about my $1 million “Grim Reaper” television campaign. He actually said on your segment:

“I didn’t know about this campaign until the whole story broke about the ABC banning him.”

Once again, that proves exactly what Mark O’Connor is saying in Overloading Australia. That is, ABC television news and current affairs (and, I will add, The Drum), constantly show bias on the growth issue.

Every one of your panelists were clearly pro endless growth. I particularly loved the comment by Alan Kirkland:

“So we are getting a lot out of migration at the moment, geared predominantly towards delivering what employers need, and that is what fuels the economy, and it has been one of the most consistent forces driving economic growth in Australia, decade upon decade.”

Of course he doesn’t mention for an instant – nor do you, and I would have thought you would have as you are a mother of young children – that with automation and robotics there are real concerns that there will be enough jobs to give a decent full-time career to our young people in the future.

That is why, in my Fair Go manifesto, I have canvassed the idea of a living wage – not at all mentioned by any of your people.

Then of course there is the tired old point from Alan Kirkland:

“We absolutely need to have this debate because I guess the missing piece is saying that population has grown that that has fuelled economic growth but we have really dropped the ball on infrastructure and on housing in particular.”

Yes, that is the Harry Triguboff belief. You just need to spend more money on infrastructure and housing, and the endless growth will be solved.

Has Mr Kirkland forgotten that our high schools are now moving into high rise, and children are living like termites rather than free range with a back yard and a cubby house?

Georgina Downer from the Institute of Public Affairs, reckons, “It is quite rich for Dick Smith to say he is being ignored,” and then goes on saying that I pitched my whole argument about immigration “being incredibly damaging” when this is clearly not true.

Julia, why didn’t you bring up at any stage the issue that I am talking about? It is very simple. You can’t have endless growth in population and the use of resources and energy in a finite world. There is no discussion on this because the politicians have been totally intimidated because they may be branded “anti-immigration.”

It appears that the briefing note handed to panellists said that this was a “stunt.” Nothing could be further from the truth. Since producing my documentary on population, which was run on the ABC, I have worked constantly on this important issue that affects all Australians.

Of note, the documentary was commissioned not by television news and current affairs, but by a completely different ABC department, and the man who did the commissioning did not have his contract renewed.

Julia, you, like every mother, has a population plan – you didn’t have 20 kids. Australian families are sensible and have the number of children to whom they can give a good life. Why then shouldn’t we have a plan for the aggregate that says, “Let’s have the number of people in Australia that we can give a good life to.”

I would say that is pretty simple, but it is not discussed in any way – driven by the fear of politicians into being dishonestly distorted in their views, as your segment did to me last night.

Most importantly, I note the statement by marketing strategist Toby Ralph:

“I am very concerned that he is a guy who won’t vote for a Party that he is about to give $2 million to, and that seems to me a contradiction that you can’t fully move past. I think he needs a nice long lie down and a think about that.”

One simple phone call by your researchers to me would have informed them that I have never had any intention of making a donation to One Nation in relation to this issue. It is a complete fabrication.

I have attached a copy of the chapter in Overloading Australia entitled Media bias and ABC blues. I ask you to read it, and today at 4.30 pm I will be at the ABC Headquarters at Ultimo, waiting downstairs, and I expect to be given a chance to go on air to have the truth told.

I should point out that eight out of ten Australians agree with my views that we should have open discussion and a population plan – not endless growth, driven normally by endless greed.

Regards

Dick Smith

Appendix: Descriptiion of The Drum episode 158

Tonight on The Drum: Julia Baird is joined by marketing strategist Toby Ralph, CEO of CHOICE Alan Kirkland, Georgina Downer from the Institute of Public Affairs and Fairfax national affairs editor Mark Kenny. #TheDrum,

Unconventional Economist, Leith van Onselen again takes the ABC to task over its shocking bias in reporting and discussing the impacts of Australia's population growth. In this case he exposes the failure of political guests and the moderator on Q&A to respond to the core of an importance audience question about Australia's population ponzi and housing unaffordability. Article first published on Macrobusiness on April 13, 2017 at https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2017/04/yet-abc-refuses-discuss-population-ponzi/.

I noted on Tuesday how the ABC has recently displayed shocking bias in the immigration debate.

In late March, ABC’s The Link aired a shockingly biased segment whereby presenter Stan Grant tried to bully Dick Smith on immigration, aggressively dismissing Smith’s arguments and replacing them with a whole bunch of myths and faulty logic in support of a ‘Big Australia’.

ABC Lateline then aired a half-hour segment on housing affordability, which failed to even mention mass immigration’s key role in driving up housing demand and prices in Sydney and Melbourne, despite me cutting a monologue on this exact issue for Lateline, which the ABC left on the cutting room flaw.

Earlier this month, ABC The Drum aired a shockingly biased segment spruiking benefits from immigration without acknowledging the various costs for the incumbent population, including for housing.

And over the weekend, the ABC badly misrepresented comments from former CBA CEO, Ralph Norris, who claimed that Australia’s housing woes were being caused by excessive demand from rapid population growth (immigration).

On Monday night, we got another dose of the ABC’s bias when Q&A refused to acknowledge or discuss the population ponzi following a reader’s question. Below is the transcript (video at 14.29):

Housing Ponzi:

QUESTION

A reversal of the two-speed economy now sees residential construction in the eastern states driving the nation’s prosperity. But some have likened the current housing boom in Sydney and Melbourne to a population Ponzi scheme, and housing affordability is a major problem. How long does the panel think that housing and population growth can continue to make up for mining and manufacturing? And is it time for a rethink of the generous tax concessions offered by negative gearing?

TONY JONES

I’ll start with Penny Wong, because that is a specific policy of the Labor Party.

PENNY WONG

Well, I mean, we have a view, and I think, you know, a fair few people have backed it in, frankly, that you don’t have a serious housing affordability policy unless you tackle negative gearing and capital gains tax. We have some of the most generous tax incentives in the world for investors. We have a very small proportion of new owners…of housing being bought by first-home buyers. We’ve got very large numbers of proportion of investors in the market. Something’s got to give, and if we don’t tackle the tax incentives, which really don’t level… which skew the playing field towards investors, then you really don’t have a housing affordability policy. And the extraordinary thing is that we saw the Treasurer today giving a speech on housing affordability where the single biggest area which he needs to address was off the table for political reasons, not for policy reasons.

TONY JONES

You mean negative gearing?

PENNY WONG

Negative gearing, yes. Because they want to be able to belt us about it rather than actually have a sensible discussion about the policy.

TONY JONES

Just a very brief one. The Australian ran up the flag pole the idea that Morrison, the Treasurer, would talk in that speech about the idea of super funds for first-home buyers being able to be raided to pay for housing, or at least to give a deposit.

PENNY WONG

Well, this is the idea that Malcolm Turnbull himself has described as a thoroughly bad idea, and I agree with him, because if you’re saying to people, “Raid your retirement savings,” which is what it is, to purchase a house, it seems to me pretty bad economic policy.

TONY JONES

OK. Mitch Fifield?

MITCH FIFIELD

Thanks, Tony. Thanks, David. Negative gearing, ultimately, is a way of getting a tax deduction for an expense incurred in earning income. That’s what negative gearing is.

TONY JONES

If you already own a house, to be precise.

MITCH FIFIELD

Yeah, but that is…that’s part of our system of taxation. What we have great difficulty with is Labor presenting negative gearing as though it somehow magically solves the housing shortage and housing affordability. It wouldn’t. It’s something that people have made investment decisions based upon, so you don’t want to go changing these things lightly. Overwhelmingly, the single greatest contributor to the housing affordability issue is land supply, is a lack of land in the right places, is zoning restrictions that make it difficult to develop, is red tape that makes it difficult for housing estates. And also, importantly, having infrastructure, like transport in the right places. That’s… Those things together probably make the greatest contribution.

TONY JONES

Mitch, I’ll come back to you. I will come back to you.

MITCH FIFIELD

One point….

TONY JONES

I will come back to you, but make your quick point.

MITCH FIFIELD

Just a quick point. Ultimately, this is a shared endeavour between federal, state and local governments, which is why the Treasurer has indicated that, in the Budget, we will have measures where the Commonwealth can make a contribution to doing something about this issue.

PENNY WONG

Two very quick points. One, Mitch talks about retrospectivity. Our policy was no retrospectivity, so existing assets would be continued to be treated the same. What we wanted to do was restrict negative gearing to new housing to try and pull on supply. But the second point, the Government never answers – why should somebody buying their seventh house have a better…have more tax incentives than someone buying their first?

(APPLAUSE)

TONY JONES

I’ll let you respond to this question, you obviously want to, and then I’ll go to…

NIKKI GEMMELL

I just feel like this is one of the great political tragedies, housing affordability, of this generation. As a mother of four kids, I just despair that my children will ever be able to live in the same city as me. But then what I’m also noticing around me, in terms of my peers in their 40s, 50s, 60s, there a lot of people around me who are still renting, who have never been able to make that leap into the great Australian dream of owning their own plot or block, whatever it is. And I just think that’s so sad. We’re facing worlds of retrenchment, of jobs that aren’t secure anymore, of situations where pension funds… You know, we don’t have the super to pay into our pension funds. I just feel like this is a huge ticking time bomb and we don’t only need to talk about the younger generation, it’s the older generation as well, heading into their pension years and still renting.

TONY JONES

I’ll come to you, I will, I just want to… The Great Britain has had a similar experience.

NIKKI GEMMELL

The Great Britain.

BILLY BRAGG

Yeah. We do, we do have.

TONY JONES

The Great Britain, or Great Britain. I mean, the massive price inflation of housing in London has forced a huge number of people out of the city.

BILLY BRAGG

It’s right across the country, really. I think the average house price now is over eight times more than the median disposable income for the average family, average median income. And this has had a considerable knock-on effect. One of the reasons why is because people who no longer can make any money on savings, or rely on a pension, are buying houses to rent to people. I don’t know if they’re the second homes you’re talking about. Are they being bought to rent out or are they being bought to live in?

TONY JONES

Mostly by investors to rent.

BILLY BRAGG

Yeah. We call it buy-to-rent. It’s the same sort of thing. And obviously, as a renter, you do get certain tax breaks and the people that you’re…renting the houses out don’t have a great deal of protection. This has become a very big issue. And as you said, we also have the situation where many of our key workers – our teachers, our firefighters, our nurses – are having to live outside of the cities where they’re working. It’s a considerable problem. 50% of the land that gets permission to be built on isn’t built on. The amount of affordable housing that’s built on there is dwindling all the time because of the huge profits to be made in selling up-market houses. It’s a real situation. We should be building more houses. And at the moment, the local councils are not allowed to build houses. Now the Government wants housing associations – and they’re the people that replaced the councils for building affordable housing – they’re going to compel housing associations to sell their houses on the free market. It’s ridiculous.

TONY JONES

OK, Mitch Fifield, should this not be treated as a national emergency, and would you not get credit if you did that? A government often said to have little vision, a government going down in the polls, could actually make a huge…well, impact, by doing something like that, but it never happens.

MITCH FIFIELD

Well, to the contrary, the Treasurer and the Prime Minister have indicated that housing affordability is high priority for the Government. That’s why we’re going to have a plan in the Budget. And we’ve got to look at all elements because housing availability isn’t just about home ownership, it’s about rental affordability, it’s about social housing, it’s about homelessness. You need to have a comprehensive package that addresses all of those elements, but you also need the cooperation of the state governments and local governments. As I said before, it’s a shared endeavour of all levels of government, and it’s something that we’re going to have a lot more to say about in the Budget.

TONY JONES

OK, it’s time to move along.

As you can see, not one panelist even mentioned the central part of the question pertaining to Melbourne and Sydney housing being a “population Ponzi scheme”, nor whether it is sustainable. Nor did Tony Jones do his usual thing and bring guests back onto the key point of the question.

Hopelessly biased ABC.

By Leith van Onselen

Days of incessant propaganda from the ABC, SBS and all other mainstream media toeing the Trump/US Establishment line on chemical weapons in Syria, without any overt logical basis, prompted the author to make a complaint. David Macilwain was in Syria in 2010, corresponds internationally with diverse people concerned about Syria's rights, and has visited Russia twice in the past three years, in a quest to discuss and share views on current events and to build up contacts who might be interviewed by the Australian press rather than the narrow sample usually referred to.

This morning the ABC’s RN breakfast presenter Fran Kelly interviewed a ‘former adviser to the Syrian government and Bashar al Assad’ – Dr Samir Altaqi - who now lives in Dubai. Ostensibly the purpose of the interview was to find out who might replace Assad once he has been ‘removed’. According to the ABC and other Western media, this removal will happen once Rex Tillerson has persuaded Vladimir Putin to stop supporting ‘the Syrian dictator’.

Unsurprisingly for a member of Syria’s government who has abandoned his own country and moved to one of the West’s local allies in the war on Syria, nothing Dr Altaqi said related to the reality of Syria, where the vast majority of citizens now support both their elected President and their defending Army.

You can judge for yourself here: http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/breakfast/us-tells-russia-to-abandon-syrias-assad/8436004

One has to ask who is responsible for finding such NATO-friendly 'dissident' voices who will back up the accepted narrative, and one which is almost the only view to be heard on the ABC. I had assumed that long-time presenter Fran Kelly, who has pushed a pro-Syrian 'opposition' viewpoint since the start of the war, played some part in choosing her interviewees, but it appears not so simple.

This interview was almost the last straw, following days of incessant propaganda from the ABC, SBS and all other mainstream media, and pushed me to phone the ABC Australia Radio breakfast programme immediately.

I spoke to the executive producer, Cheryl Bagwell, who was impatient and busy and advised me to phone later when the program finished, while at the same time explaining that she ‘didn’t want to get into an argument over Syria’.

When I phoned back, I got the same impatient and petulant response, despite explaining I was a spokesperson for Australians for Mussalaha (Reconciliation)In Syria (AMRIS), and had a complaint over the interviewee’s viewpoint on Assad. She said something like ‘so you support Assad and dismiss his use of barrel bombs and chemical weapons’ – to which I said – “Of course I support him, along with at least 15 million Syrians!”

Then she said something like, 'We’ve had too many calls from your people recently and we’re tired of it'. I’m not ‘your people’ – by which presumably she meant those from Hands off Syria (HoS), who’ve been victimised by the Murdoch Press and the ABC’s Media Watch just recently.

She went off into what seemed to me a bit of a tirade about how the ABC was the best and most balanced coverage of the issue and ‘can you tell me of one that is better?’ – she demanded.

I said that there was nothing that was any better in Australia, as they were all bad and biased and failed to air the Russian or Syrian viewpoint, and I asked if she listened to RT or other non-Western media, mentioning how RT was no different from the ‘independent’ ABC since they are both State supported broadcasters.

She said that only just the other day they had interviewed a Russian analyst – as if any would do. I heard that interview, with the ‘leading Russian military analyst’, Pavel Felgenhauer. (Podcast at
https://radio.abc.net.au/programitem/pgMVjNAZQV?play=true.)

In this interview, the first question was, “At what point will Russia abandon Assad?” Pavel Felgenhauer's response was that Russia won’t abandon Assad - not because Assad isn’t responsible for a chemical weapons attack - but because Russia has invested so much in Syria, both militarily and politically. He said that some Russian advisers should have known that Assad was going to use chemical weapons, but may not have told the Kremlin.

Fran Kelly then asked, “But why would Russia stay so solid behind Assad? What’s the bigger picture?"

Pavel Felgenhauer said that, “Politically it would be too embarassing to abandon Assad, and lose face.” [...] “Russia right now is in a very isolated position, with even China supporting Trump’s actions... "

The ABC’s choice of interviewee in both cases, whether made by Fran Kelly or by Cheryl Bagwell, shows extreme confirmation bias. When I challenged the views espoused by the Russian guest, Bagwell said that he was from Moscow, and would know more than any of us about the situation.

In fact, knowing the views of many Russian analysts and commentators, I would assert that it would be hard to find any others who believed that Assad had actually used chemical weapons, leave alone ‘against his own people’. Just as you wouldn’t find someone from Syria, outside the ‘rebel-occupied’ zones, who would confirm the view that Bashar al Assad is head of an Alawite coterie oppressing the Syrian people.

Whoever is ultimately responsible for choosing the ‘analysts’ and ‘experts’ at the ABC, it is now clear that changing the thinking there is almost impossible. Any voice dissenting from the ABC narrative on Bashar al-Assad, or Vladimir Putin, would be accused of being one of ‘your people’, and their viewpoint dismissed out of hand.

How shallow the ABC’s Mediawatch (‘Media war over Syria’ [11 April 2017]) treats such an important issue, the 6 year long war against Syria. They have cobbled together a few tweets so as to defend the war story of the US and Australian Governments, and the state and corporate media (ABC, BBC and UK Guardian) which faithfully reflect that line.

They then randomly add a few tweets from me, a couple of other writers and the crazy right winger Alex Jones. I’m not sure what they wanted to achieve, but does this have anything do with Mediawatch’s supposed mission of holding the media to account? I think not.

Mediawatch seem to have learnt little from its 2014 defamation of Reme Sakr, a young Syrian-Australian woman who took them to court over their attack on her. She was not a journalist but a student of journalism, and a profile of her was published in the Good Weekend. Mediawatch went more for this young student than for the media. At issue was Mediawatch’s wish to debunk any criticism of the war on Syria, including by support of the August 2013 false flag chemical weapons incident in countryside Damascus.

They attacked Reme for supporting her government. The ABC eventually paid her a sum of money as compensation for their lies against her, also swearing her to secrecy so no one would know about their deceit. They also agreed to finally add Reme’s full reply to their website, which they had earlier truncated. She has since returned to Syria to help her country survive this terrible war.

They treat my tweets as though they were theories off the top of my head. If they had done their homework they would have seen that I published a well-researched book on the conflict, more than a year ago. I gave particular emphasis to collecting hundreds of sources of evidence on the massacres and various claims made by the al Qaeda groups and Washington. The Dirty War on Syria is now published in seven languages. A number of chapters are free online, here: http://www.globalresearch.ca/author/tim-anderson