must Melbourne keep growing

What is a normal response from an environment minister to a straight question to a matter that alarms about 80% of Australians, as even self-styled demographer, Bernard Salt of KPMG admits? [1] Mr Kelvin Thomson, ALP member for Wills, asked Greg Hunt, the Liberal Government Minister for the Environment, whether the Government would consider adopting a stable population policy to avoid new infrastructure imperatives. Minister Hunt responded bluntly that "the answer to the honourable member's question was: No."[2]

Mr Hunt does not seem like much of a Minister for the Environment. And he does not appear to have much interest in democracy. This is the second time he has flouted the public right to accountable policy this year. See also, "Environment Minister Greg Hunt speaks fluent nonsense to Kelvin Thomson on population".

Calls for referendum on population growth

This refusal is particularly flagrant when his own state (Victoria) has recently had two events which resulted in resounding calls for a referendum on halting population growth. These were, "The Big Population Debate", organised by Mary Drost of Planning Backlash on 13 October 2014 and "Must Melbourne Keep Growing", organised by Jill Quirk of Sustainable Population Australia and Victoria First on 14 June 2014.

Before an audience of around 280 people, Mary Drost, Convener of Planning Backlash, commenting that "We the people have never been asked if we wanted a big population," obtained from Kelvin Thomson and Lord Mayor Robert Doyle that they were in favour of a referendum on population growth.

At the equally packed auditorium at the Hawthorne Arts Centre Chandelier Room for the Must Melbourne Keep Growing event, Julianne Bell of Protectors of Public Land, read a motion for a plebiscite on population growth, which was also passed unanimously.

"That this meeting calls on the Victorian government to convene a scientifically based Victorian conference on what constitutes a long term environmentally sustainable population for Victoria, with reference to the Victorian State of the environment reports of 2008 and 2013 indicating environmental damage from current population levels."

Is Mr Hunt so afraid that he can't defend his policies?

Then again, maybe Minister Hunt is simply afraid to open his mouth on the subject. Especially to Mr Thomson, who is awfully well informed about it. At the Big Population Debate, we saw a remarkably courageous or foolhardy Lord Mayor of Melbourne's fire go out like a doused squib at the first encounter with intelligent argument on the subject. Then again, he could have prepared better. Or could he?

It was the Victorian environmentalist, Jill Quirk, who remarked, not so long ago, "I dare anyone to argue the benefits of population growth to ordinary Australians without mentioning cappuccino or using the word 'vibrant'. Indeed, Lord Mayor Doyle returned again and again to the accessibility of a good cup of coffee in contemporary overpopulated Melbourne. Although no-one can actually remember him using the word 'vibrant' - he might have slipped one in somewhere as his arguments grew progressively harder to decipher.

NOTES

[1] Bernard Salt in Straightening out bananas 2010, who is in the business of trying to persuade Australians to embrace the population jugganaut, admits freely to colleagues in the Property Council of Australia that if you polled Australians on 'big Australia' 80% would come back against it.
[2] Minister for the Environment, Greg Hunt, House of Representatives Question No. 0103:
Mr Thomson asked the Minister for the Environment, in writing on 13 May 2014:
Will the Government consider adopting a stable population policy to avoid new infrastructure imperatives?
Mr Hunt: The answer to the honourable member's question is as follows: No. [Dated 25 July 2014]

Video of William Bourke's speech inside. William Bourke is the President of the Sustainable Population Party. In this speech he covers a broad range of issues relevant to the population debate including: political donations and the power of vested interests, growth lobby spin, the world's biggest tower, GDP, Victoria's deteriorating economic base, the economic importance of natural capital, single issue politics, and a potential way forward for the population debate through a national vote by plebiscite.

You can hear more from Mr Bourke and from the other speakers and the open mic session at the "Does Melbourne have to keep growing?" forum from videos in the following article: "Melbourne must stop growing - Packed hall in Hawthorn votes for plebiscite."

The Sustainable Population Party's website is at www.populationparty.org.au

This morning the Herald Sun reported that Melbourne has experienced its fastest property boom since the turn of the century. The median house price rose by over $100,000 in the past nine months, jumping over six percent each quarter from June last year to the end of March this year. These figures came from the Real Estate Institute of Victoria, which is happy about them. But elsewhere in the Herald Sun, Tom Elliott, who has a radio program on 3AW, has a less rosy assessment of the situation. In an article titled "Home horror is a people problem" he pointed out that first home buyers face a housing market that is one of the most expensive on earth. According to the International Monetary Fund, Australian residential real estate prices as a multiple of average incomes are exceeding only those of Canada and Belgium.

And not only was Tom Elliott on to the fact that rising house prices is not a good thing for the young people who get locked out of the chance to have their own home, he was also on to the reason why. "What is the real reason houses are now so expensive?" he asked, and gave the following answer "Look around – its people. More specifically the huge increase in population that Australia, and particularly Melbourne, has experienced over the past twenty years". His conclusion was that until we work out a way to conjure up more land close to the city, reducing population growth is the only sure fire method of denting property prices".

He's absolutely right. And he's certainly right about the huge recent increase in Melbourne's population.

In recent years Melbourne's population has taken off. We have been growing at an unprecedented rate – 200 a day, 1500 a week, 75,000 a year, more or less, year in, year out. Each new population projection for Melbourne is bigger and more outrageous than the one before it. The latest says we'll get to 7.7 million by 2051!

The question we don't spend near enough time thinking about is, is this growth giving us a better city? Now I am not a zealot or an ideologue. I am fundamentally a very middle of the road, practical sort of person. So when I try to work out whether something is a good idea, I look around for examples to compare it with real-­life examples. If I can't see how something works in practice, I don't set too much store by it.

Now in the case of thinking about an issue like the size of Melbourne, there seem to me two relevant kinds of example, two kinds of comparisons we can make. One is with other cities, both bigger ones and smaller ones. And one of the advantages of my life is that I've got to see a lot of other cities, both bigger and smaller. And I am absolutely convinced that in terms of living standards and quality of life that the smaller cities have it all over the bigger ones. We do not want to become Manilla or Mumbai, or London or New York.

Let me return to Tom Elliott's last line this morning "Until we work out a way to conjure up more land close to the city...." Of course some planners and policy makers, to say nothing of property developers, think they have achieved just that with their dual occupancies and multi-unit developments and in particular with their high rise. Let's build upwards, they say. The City of Melbourne reported breathlessly that in 2013 it had welcomed 11,000 new residents, making Melbourne City Council the fastest growing municipality in Australia. John Masanauskas wrote in the Herald Sun in May that over the past few years, in the CBD, 90 high-rise towers have been approved.

The advocates for high rise and multi-unit developments say they are necessary to maintain housing affordability. But if this is their purpose, then they are failing miserably. Housing has never been less affordable, as I pointed out earlier. Another thing they say about high rise is that we shouldn't stress so much about quantity – it's quality that matters. Reducing our environmental footprint and living sustainably is all about good design, and efficiency and so on.

To respond to that, let me turn from this morning's Herald Sun to this morning's Saturday Age. Aisha Dow reports that windowless bedrooms exist in almost a quarter of new residential developments in the CBD. A Melbourne City Council study estimates that more than half of the city's tallest apartment buildings over 15 storeys are of poor quality, with common design flaws and lack of natural light. All of the high rise apartment designs were considered either poor or average quality. Common failings include kitchens in hallways, poor storage, lack of ventilation and excessive energy use. The latter point is very significant, because there is a myth around that high rise is environmentally superior.

The Age says some Melbourne architects are so unhappy with the result of buildings they have designed that they have refused to have their name associated with them. The article quotes the Melbourne architect Jon Clements, representing the Australian Institute of Architects, saying "The general feeling among architects is that it's ridiculous to be forcing architects to produce buildings that don't appropriate quality and amenity standards". He is calling for minimum apartment design standards to be legislated. Some people would call minimum quality standards red tape. But I say the absence of them is a recipe for 21st century slums.

I lived in New York as an Australian Parliamentary representative to the United Nations for three months a couple of years ago. Fascinating, certainly, but not as good a city to live in as Melbourne, not even close. Even the relentlessly pro-growth, pro-business, The Economist ranked Melbourne at the time as the most liveable city in the world. New York was 56th. No doubt this has much to do with New York's well documented problems with crime, drugs, unemployment, beggars in the streets, and unaffordable housing. And all this is on a good day. It's intricately designed public and private transport networks have no margin for error and are incredibly vulnerable to adverse events like car accidents, train derailments, or storms. When these happen the whole system seizes up and hundreds of thousands of commuters are left stranded, seething with impotent rage.

Manhattan's intersections carry a myriad of signs warning of $350 fines for motorists who honk their horns. But they honk anyway. They honk constantly. They honk because they are angry, sitting there in gridlock in traffic. Is this really what we want for our city? Is it seriously worth sacrificing the vision of Melbourne's founding fathers of a city of parks, or the former Victorian Liberal Premier Dick Hamer of a city of green wedges, for this?

It is an urban myth that people living in high rise buildings use less energy and have a lower environmental footprint than people in detached houses. In Manhattan people run their air conditioners all day and all night to keep their airless apartments cool. There are no rainwater tanks, no solar PV panels, no people growing their own vegetables. Manhattan is not the self-sufficient, sustainable world of the future. It is a product of a time when we thought the sky was the limit. But the planet does have limits — food, water, energy, carbon.

The second kind of comparison I make is with the past. I remember what Melbourne was like when I was young. I remember what it was like 10 years ago. It is not getting any better. I've already talked about declining housing affordability. It is way harder for my children and their generation to afford a house than it was for my generation or that of my parents. And there's traffic congestion. We had a great deal of discussion about that at the February Victoria First Meeting with Dr Ernest Healy.

And then there is planning. We talked about that in Ringwood in April with Professor Michael Buxon. Developers use doublespeak terms like "housing choice", "sustainable", "exemplary design", and "efficient planning". But these are all code for removing residents rights to meaningfully object to developments in their neighbourhoods. I stand for the right of residents to have a say in the character of the street, the neighbourhood, the community in which they live.

You know they say that Melbourne and Australia used to be greyer and duller before we went all out on population growth. I grew up in the sixties and seventies. Jim Keays has just passed away. We had the Masters Apprentices, Daddy Cool, Skyhooks, Sherbert, Zoot, Chain! Seriously life was not duller or less interesting back then! We had more freedom more choices.

Is life better now for students? With youth unemployment at much higher levels than when I was young, and students being fitted with deregulated course fees and a student debt that goes up at the long term bond rate and gets bigger rather than smaller over time? I don't think so.

Is life better now for older people? With electricity, gas, water and council rates increasing above the rate of CPI, with increasing costs to visit the doctor, with cuts foreshadowed to the rate of pension indexation? I don't think so.

And is the environment in better shape than it used to be? We all know the answer to that one. Our list of endangered species grows ever longer, and climate change threatens more droughts, bushfires, and extreme weather events.

In recent decades Melbourne has grown both upwards and outwards. What have been the consequences? I have given a window into the consequences of growing upwards in talking about Manhattan, including beggars in the streets. And indeed the Lord Mayor of Melbourne Robert Doyle talks at some length about the problem of begging in the city in his Mayor's Message in their latest publication. Not something a Lord Mayor of the 60s or 70s would have needed to talk about.

But there are plenty of consequences from growing outwards too. We've expanded over fertile soils very suitable for vegetable growing. We've expanded into bushfire prone areas. And when fires come, and they always do, everyone wants someone else to pay for the damage — homeowners, insurance companies, councils, taxpayers. No-one thinks they should have to wear the loss. And just last Sunday the Sunday Age reported that thousands of homes in new estates from Grovedale on the outskirts of Geelong to Doreen in Melbourne's north, and including homes in the municipalities of Hume, Melton and Wyndham, have been built on highly reactive volcanic clay soils on "waffle slab" foundations. Soil movements under a home's foundations are causing walls to crack, doors and windows to jam, and floors to tilt. Homeowners now facing ruinous home renovation and legal bills will not think that housing has become more affordable for them as a result of greedy and short-­sighted behaviour by property developers and planning authorities.

This is also an issue about quality of life and mental health of communities. Health experts have pointed out clear health benefits from exposure to nature. Children build up their immune system by playing with soil and being in the real world rather than indoors. What do you call a kid in a backyard? A free range kid. Joggers and walkers and cyclists have been found to derive mental health benefits from being doing their exercise outdoors rather than in a gym. Patients in a hospital recover more quickly if they have a view out their window of nature, rather than a wall, to look at as they convalesce. And retaining green spaces and trees and vegetation helps keep our city cool, and reduce the urban heat island effect. Most of you will notice on the weather report at night how Melbourne is warmer than surrounding areas. This is because of the extent of heat absorbing concrete, brick and bitumen we have in the city. This might feel like a good thing in June, but it isn't when we have the heatwaves in January, February or March. They kill people. We should be doing what we can to stop Melbourne from overheating.

We spend endless amounts of time on our grey infrastructure — the freeways, bridges, drainage and so on. We need to put more effort into protecting and advancing our GREEN infrastructure of parks and trees and vegetation, and our BLUE infrastructure of creeks and beaches and lakes and waterways. We shouldn't see this as an environmental issue, as if it's some optional extra that we can afford to care about some years but not others. It is a health issue. And our health is a core issue by any yardstick. The OECD says that health is, globally, the highest ranked issue of public concern.

The things that we used to be able to afford — free education, free health care, a home of your own, a say in what happens in our street — now we are told we can't afford them anymore. Well if we can't, we're not better off, we're worse off.

We need to show the same foresight the founders of this city showed when it was initially designed. They left us with a city with open space, extensive tram and train networks, and liveable suburbs supported by extensive local infrastructure in the form of schools, hospitals and social services. We should leave a legacy for future generations that we, and they, can be proud of.

Kelvin Thomson MP

Inside is the video of the Open Microphone session for members of the audience, including members of community groups for Must Melbourne keep growing. Motions passed calling for a national plebescite on population numbers and for a national conference on sustainable population taking into account State of the Environment reports.

We may replace this film with one taken from another angle which recorded the size of the audience, the applause and the show of hand on the motions. In the meantime this gives the content of the Open Microphone session.

In this report, Ernest Healy, spokesperson for the Moreland Planning Action Group, concludes that VCAT, together with the MCC, have created a precedent which overrides the intended meaning of government policy. He argues that the meaning of the Victorian government’s Policy on Commercial 1 zone can be interpreted to mean that, if the commercial potential of a commercial 1 site is poor, then its suitability for medium density residential development should also be deemed poor.

Moreland City Council – Density at all costs

On April 7th and 8th, 2014, the Moreland City Council opposed an application for the development of 14 three-storey townhouses on a Commercial 1 site in Xavier St Oak Park at VCAT. It did so on the grounds that the commercial site included a public road, for which the City claimed responsibility.

Despite this objection relating to the road, the MCC submission to VCAT made it clear that Council had no serious objections to the project proceeding on planning grounds.

In fact, the Council submission went to some lengths to discredit local resident objections to VCAT, which largely addressed planning criteria – parking, congestion, visual bulk, out-of character development.

Part of Council’s argument for the suitability of this development related to the site’s proximity to the Oak Park shopping centre and railway station.

However, Council’s argument to VCAT, that the townhouse development was suitable because of the close proximity to the Oak Park shops, flatly contradicted its own previous assessment of access to the Oak Park shops from the western side, published a month earlier, when Council staff assessed the Oak Park shopping centre’s suitability for inclusion as a Neighbourhood Activity Centre. The Oak Park shopping centre was rejected by Council officers as unsuitable for inclusion as a NAC because of poor accessibility from the western side of the shopping centre.

Because the proposed townhouse development was to the western side of the Oak Park shops, where access had been deemed to be poor, one would expect that Council would advise VCAT that the development did not have good access to the Oak Park shops and railway station. But, they did not. Consider the following two sets of statements

Again, the relevant statements relate to the question of ease of access to the Oak Park shopping centre from the proposed development site in Xavier St to the West.

Moreland City Council submission to VCAT, March 18, 2014- including response to objectors (residents) grounds:

“The proposal is an appropriate renewal of land that is currently underutilised given its commercial zoning and reasonable access to transport and shops.” (my emphasis)

“The subject land is located in an established urban area with good access to a range of infrastructure and services.” (my emphasis)

“The site is approximately 300 meters walking distance from Oak Park Railway Station. The Oak Park Village shopping strip is located just east of the station, providing good access to local shops.” (my emphasis)

Moreland City Council assessment of access to the Oak Park Shopping Centre, Published February, 2014:

“Access to the centre is provided via Snell Grove and Waterloo Road on the eastern side of the railway which is considered the catchment for this centre. The railway and topography to the west makes pedestrian and vehicle access to the centre from the west challenging. (my emphasis)

… the steep topography of western side of the railway results in poor pedestrian and vehicles access to the centre (i.e. steep, concealed underpass and no vehicle crossing point) from the west. The catchment would principally be east of railway line given this.” (my emphasis)
(MCC, MORELAND ACTIVITY CENTRE FRAMEWORK, REPORT 1 - FEBRUARY 2014, p. 53)

1. The MCC undertook to undermine resident objections to this development when a plausible case on planning grounds could have been made against it, in support of resident concerns.

2. In its submission to VCAT, the Moreland City Councils’ assessment of access to the Oak Park shopping centre from the Western side of the Oak Park Station flatly contradicted its recent, detailed assessment which deemed access from the west to be poor.

The Bigger Picture:

This instance raises serious doubts as to how the Victorian government’s Commercial 1 zone will be treated in cases where the commercial potential of the site is deemed to be poor – as is the case with many dilapidated shopping strips.

Having decided that the Xavier St site had little or no commercial potential, VCAT simply decided that, by default, the site could be treated almost solely as a residential development.

VCAT was simply not interested in discussing the meaning of the Victorian government’s
Policy on Commercial 1 zone, which can be interpreted to mean that, if the commercial potential of a commercial 1 site is poor, then its suitability for medium density residential development should also be deemed poor.

Commercial 1 zone:

‘Purpose

To create vibrant mixed use commercial centres for retail, office, business, entertainment
and community uses.

To provide for residential uses at densities complementary to the role and scale of the
commercial centre.’

(34.0115/07/2013 VC100)

One reading of this is that where the role and scale of the commercial centre is low, the potential for medium-density housing development will also be low. Here, ‘Complementarity’ relates to the creation of mixed-use centres, and does not mean that one use can be simply substituted for another where the other use is deficient.

VCAT, together with the MCC, have created a precedent which overrides the intended meaning of government policy.

Why is Melbourne's population projected to skyrocket, all of a sudden? What is driving this? Why are people confused between refugees and economic immigration. Why can't we communicate and organise in order to bring the government into line? Why do our governments ignore the people?

Taking back the talking stick

"The talking stick, also called a speaker's staff is an instrument of aboriginal democracy used by many tribes. It may be passed around a group or used only by leaders as a symbol of their authority and right to speak in public. In a tribal council circle, a talking stick is passed around from member to member allowing only the person holding the stick to speak. This enables all those present at a council meeting to be heard, especially those who may be shy; consensus can force the stick to move along to assure that the "long winded" don't dominate the discussion; and the person holding the stick may allow others to interject. "[1] An open mike is the same kind of thing. This talk is about how elites have got control of the talking stick and how to get it back.

Speech for Must Melbourne keep growing? by Sheila Newman June 14, 2014

The question is does Melbourne have to keep growing? My response is that it is not a natural inbuilt requirement that populations constantly increase in size. Many developed and undeveloped countries and regions are not growing like Australia. Pacific islanders had stable populations for about 60,000 years. Although most industrialised countries ballooned with industrialization and access to cheap fossil fuel, many reset their population growth downwards after the game-changing 1973 oil shock. But countries that inherited the British land-tenure and political system – the United States, Australia, Canada – did not reset; they borrowed to continue population growth and expansion. Secondly, there is no economic imperative to keep population growing, as is being done, via high immigration. Plenty of countries survive well with small stable populations.

So why is Melbourne’s population projected to skyrocket? Unfortunately, the problem is that population increase is being engineered by sociological forces that are responding to focused benefits from the very things that cause suffering to the rest of us and damage the natural world. By this I mean that, via high immigration policies, powerful people in various business groups are successfully enacting pro-growth ideologies. All that the counter-growth movement is really asking is for the growth lobby to desist and allow our population to evolve naturally and democratically. We are not the population controllers; they are.

These pro-growth forces are highly organized, very determined, and very wealthy. They own and control most of the assets and resources, including the mass media and, arguably, large parts of Australia’s parliaments. The rest of us are relatively disorganised and poor because of this political system which concentrates land, resources and power in fewer and fewer hands.

Some traditional avenues of resistance exist, although all are compromised in this system. One new one is present – the Internet. The traditional options are:

• power in public institutions and utilities;
• power of employment connections;
• power of family communication;
• power of local government;

Power in public institutions and utilities: Historically, even though our system placed much power in private hands, in the 19th and 20th centuries we built up public institutions that safeguarded citizens’ rights to affordable water and food, electricity, housing, education, reliable employment, regulated banking. Most of these public institutions that protected our rights have since been privatised and taken beyond our influence.

Power of employment connections: Unions once brought together workers with common cause to preserve financial and other easily identifiable benefits, but the supportive industrial relations and law institutions have largely been dismantled and Australian workforces are now dispersed and temporary.

Power of family communication: One of the problems of population growth and infrastructure expansion is that it means that planners constantly insert new people and groups and buildings and roads and activities among us, interfering with established human networks. Family communication is also an uphill battle with TV, Facebook, school, commuting to work, and if you are one of many isolated Australians going from one rental to the next, couch surfing or sleeping rough. Ironically, wealthy families and clans that stick together, like the Dennis Family Corporation, the Murdochs, the Packers and the Winsors, rule the world. As more Australians become unemployed and cannot afford housing, the upside is that they will default back to family, clan and locality and communicate with neighbours on issues of mutual convenience and grow food and trade at the same level. Direct power at local level, accessed by well-networked families and clans together with neighbours is probably the most effective way to counteract the growth lobby on the ground and decisions by unrepresentative distant central governments. Women seem to lead most of the coordinated actions against overdevelopment and overpopulation in Melbourne, heading democratic planning groups, public land defence groups, ecological and wildlife protection groups, contributing to alternative media, attending parliament and organising demonstrations. They are our great strength. Their political engagement is under-reported in the mainstream media as you would expect.

Power of local government: Most people believe that immigration is entirely managed by the Federal Government, but it is at the level of local government that population control actually starts. Local Government traditionally controls building permits to control population numbers by limiting subdivisions and land clearing. This mechanism gave Australians direct control over the size of their communities. State governments in Australia have been removing this very important local government power over decades, with local government amalgamations, administrative control and laws reducing local power. Local power is the most direct and potentially useful form of democracy, more likely to unite people with a stake in the same bit of the real world.

State Government: In Australia the states have the power over land-use and water sources and the ability and responsibility to signal when infrastructure is close to capacity. They have largely taken over immigration policy decisions from the Federal government by calling themselves regions in need of migration and setting up websites and industries to market housing, business investment, and citizenship to prospective economic immigrants all over the world. All the states do this, but in Victoria the website is www.liveinvictoria.vic.gov.au . Obviously this website needs to come down.

The National Government makes decisions to support wars and sets policies for humanitarian and economic immigration. The public messaging system has erroneously convinced many people that most immigrants are ‘refugees’, using the issue as a wedge tactic to prevent people speaking out on numbers. At the same time, the media fails to critically examine the fact that many of our refugees and asylum seekers come from the places where we are engaged with NATO in what are arguably illegal resource wars. The Australian public is given no say in whether we support such wars.

The pro-growth forces control the mass media – that is, the public messaging system, which seems largely to control election choices and politicians’ policies. The effect is that, although the majority of Australians do not want population growth or its impacts, their opinion is not clearly reported and they are not aware of each other. Most of the Australian media and much overseas media are owned by Packer, Fairfax and particularly the Murdoch corporations which have vested interests in massive population growth, most obviously in their property dot coms (realestate.com.au and domain.com.au) , which sell Australian land and housing all over the world in a market that is enhanced by the promise of continuous population growth. CNN, the BBC, Al Jazeera, the ABC and SBS and generally all mainstream Anglophone press share biases and syndicate reports.

The Internet: So, how do we overcome a commercially compromised and unresponsive public messaging system that repetitively purveys this propaganda, making us believe it is both irresistible and true? By going around it and creating media that is far more relevant to most people, on the principle that real news is of real interest and that people, although schooled to passively absorb anointed opinion, if they wake up, don’t want to go to sleep again.

The traditional media relies a lot on distant authorities and events, which we cannot verify or affect. The alternative media can convey news from people on the ground, almost anywhere in the world.

The traditional media creates ‘stars’ and elevates as ‘authorities’ people who continually tell us that we must have growth. It is hard to get the attention of family, neighbours, colleagues and friends to our divergent point of view because they are conditioned to give more respect to mass media stars and opinions than to direct communication and experience.

The alternative media can identify our own real heroes and authorities – like the many women in Melbourne who head up groups to fight overpopulation and its impacts us. We can use the internet to do this, as many grass-roots organisations and BRICS countries now do.

The traditional media syndicates news and feature articles. We should do the same by republishing each other’s work on our various websites, by reciprocal interviewing and by inviting each other to speak at events, thus raising our mutual profiles and amplifying our impact collectively. Whilst it is often helpful to get a ‘mainstream’ celebrity to speak at an event, try to put some of your own on the stage as well, so that they will become known in their own right. Present them as ‘experts’. This is what the Property Council of Australia and APop do.

The Candobetter.net website, where I write and edit, promotes population activists and their activities where the mainstream press ignores them, preferring paid spokespeople from big business who tout growth. Our articles get thousands and tens of thousands of reads over time. One recent article got 12,000 reads in 3 weeks. We are actually a website for reform in democracy, environment, population, land use planning and energy policy.

Publishing on Candobetter.net is a lot surer than writing letters to the Editor at the Age, or the Herald Sun, or the Australian or the Fin Review. Try it some time.

Ideally Candobetter.net would like to be one of the alternative sites that together will replace the mainstream media middleman with more direct and diverse analysis and reports from the field.

Direct and Reliable sources of information

Instead of just reacting to mainstream disinformation, population writers and activists can access direct sources of information. Hansard is a superb direct source of politics, laws and news providing great speeches, hilarious examples and insights into our parties and politicians. Scientific sources include the CSIRO Futures program which produced the Australian Resources Atlas project and the report, Future Dilemmas. The State of the Environment Report Australia 2011 is still a good guide, and is pessimistic about population impacts even though its population projections of 100,000 net migration vastly underestimate our current population trajectory. The State of the environment reports [for]Victoria are increasingly politicized, so that the conclusions of the 2010 one did not make sense in the light of its content. The most recent one, for 2014, lacks comparability with the 2010 one, which defeats an important objective of these reports. ABS projections are a very necessary source of important information and part of public education. They rely, however, on past trends and on getting good information. They do not or cannot predict or allow for changes of policy or influence of lobby groups, except in general terms of higher or lower projections. You Tube is another direct source of information, and of course there are independent blogs and videos all over the web. As well as this, instead of just hearing the NATO line, try getting the other side from RT (Russia Today) which has great interviews, documentaries, and news and war coverage. Some other well-known alternatives are Press TV, Global Research, Voltaire Net, PaulCraigRoberts.org, the
Land Destroyer Report and the Syrian Arab Newsagency (SANA). If you speak another language you can search foreign amazon sites for books with different perspectives then order them without the usual publisher restrictions via eBay.

Resource Depletion: Sustaining growth depends on fuel. For a while there it looked like people were beginning to wake up to the finitude of petroleum and the difficulty in replacing it, but recently there has been a desperate con-job called US shale oil independence. This petroleum energy renaissance can be shown to be a wild exaggeration and has been reported as such by Bloomberg in "Dream of US Oil independence slams against shale costs." http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-27/dream-of-u-s-oil-independence-slams-against-shale-costs.html, which costs shale oil production at $1.50 for every $1.00 produced.[2]

It is really important for activists to get their heads around this because, if people believe that – first gas, now coal seam gas and shale oil – will keep business as usual, they will not resist unsustainable population growth as hard as they must.

NOTES

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talking_stick

[2] "Just a few of the roadblocks: Independent producers will spend $1.50 drilling this year for every dollar they get back." And, "Shale output drops faster than production from conventional methods. It will take 2,500 new wells a year just to sustain output of 1 million barrels a day in North Dakota's Bakken shale, according to the Paris-based International Energy Agency. Iraq could do the same with 60." http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-27/dream-of-u-s-oil-independence-slams-against-shale-costs.html.

Videos of KELVIN THOMSON and all panel speakers have been added to this article. Open mic part now published here too. Today, June 14, 2014, a packed hall with people standing at the back in the Hawthorn Arts Centre voted for a national plebiscite to ask the people what size population they wanted. The forum interacted with a panel of four speakers: Kelvin Thomson, MP for Wills; Sheila Newman, Evolutionary Sociologist and Candobetter.net editor and writer; Clifford Hayes, former Bayside Council Mayor and planning activist; and William Bourke, Leader of the Sustainable Population Party. There was a queue for the open microphone and the meeting closed later than expected. All motions passed with an overwhelming show of hands.

Packed meeting in Hawthorn backs vote on Victoria’s population

We will probably replace this film with another from another angle which recorded the size of the audience, the applause and the show of hand on the motions. In the meantime this gives the content of the Open Microphone session.

The Hawthorn Arts Centre was the venue for a large public meeting today asking the question “Must Melbourne keep growing?” Speakers, Hon. Kelvin Thomson MP, Ms. Sheila Newman, evolutionary sociologist, Mr. Clifford Hayes, former Bayside mayor and Planning activist and Mr. William Bourke president of “ Sustainable Population Party” all addressed the meeting with the ultimate message that Melbourne does not have to keep growing. The audience was given the floor for the open mic second hour of the program and took full advantage of this. The meeting voted unanimously for the federal government to hold a national vote on Australia’s population aiming to stabilise by 2040:

''That, on the basis of State of the Environment reports and in the interests of democracy, the meeting calls on the federal government to hold a national vote on population at or before the next federal election, with a proposal to allow Australia to stabilise its population by 2040. A working group will be formed by concerned citizens in order to draft an appropriate question."

Meeting voted for Gov to have scientific conference re long-term sustainable population

Additionally the meeting voted unanimously for the Victorian Government to convene a scientifically based conference to establish the long term sustainable population for the state, on a motion proposed by Ms Julianne Bell, of Protectors of Public Land:

"That this meeting calls on the Victorian government to convene a scientifically based Victorian conference on what constitutes a long term environmentally sustainable population for Victoria, with reference to the Victorian State of the environment reports of 2008 and 2013 indicating environmental damage from current population levels."

According to the President of Sustainable Population Australia’s Victorian and Tasmanian branch, Ms. Jill Quirk, ”The first resolution is to give the Australian people the right to determine their own quality of life and quality of the environment for the present and future. The second is asking the government to undertake its absolute responsibility and to stop the reckless, irreversible destruction caused by needless rapid population growth and over development happening now.”