Chris Evans

Interactions between microbes and human hosts can range from a benign, even symbiotic collaboration to a competition that may turn fatal — resulting in death of the host, the microbe or both.  What could seem benign could be a threat to existing host cultures.

Rome Scenario:

British Military strategist Rear Admiral Chris Parry pointed to the mass migration which disaster in the Third World could unleash. "The diaspora issue is one of my biggest current concerns," he said. "Globalisation makes assimilation seem redundant and old-fashioned due to the Internet and communications..."  Europe, including Britain, could be undermined by large immigrant groups with little allegiance to their host countries — a "reverse colonisation" as Parry described it.

Parry stressed that these mass population movements could lead to the “Rome scenario” – a reference to the collapse of the western Roman empire in the 4th and 5th centuries under repeated blows from groups such as Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Suevi, Huns and Vandals surging over its borders.
"In my view," concluded historian Peter Heather, "it is impossible to escape the fact that the western Empire broke up because too many outside groups established themselves on its territories." In the end, the Roman Empire, built by controlled immigration, perished under an onslaught of uncontrollable barbarian migration.

Rear Admiral Parry went on to say he was not labelling any particular group as threatening stability , but observed that there were already more than 70 diaspora groups in Britain.

More white families are moving from London to the regions while many immigrants arrive in the capital from overseas, the think-tank
Migrationwatch says.

The change in 10 years has been "extraordinarily rapid'', with 606,000 more people moving out of London than arrived from elsewhere in the country. In the same period, a net 726,000 immigrants arrived in the capital.

The recent referendum in Switzerland that saw 57.5 per cent of the population voting to ban the construction of minarets.  This is extreme tolerance considering Christians in many Muslim-background countries are being evacuated, persecuted and even martyred for refusing to conform.

Denmark now has a law preventing citizens under the age of 24 from securing residence rights for their foreign spouses. In September this year, the Flemish city of Antwerp joined France in banning the headscarf in schools.  This is hardly "ethnic cleansing" or persecution but a protection of the host's skyline, religions and cultural identity.

Weapon of “racism”:

The weapon of choice for the political elite, against any members of the indigenous population who show dissent against loss of their homeland, is the charge of 'racism'.  The pursuance of 'racism' as the ultimate taboo is the means to a political end. This is about changing the face of a nation.

The best estimate of the First Fleet, that we celebrate on Australia Day, is 1373 people.  Today the numbers of permanent and long-term migrants arriving in Australia to more than 500,000 a year. 

A 50 year 'visionary' migration plan for Australia is being developed to take into consideration such things as climate change, water availability, security and labour demands.  There is nothing about preserving our identity, or assimilation, wildlife, or the greater challenges of climate change and the higher costs of living with more people here. 

It is all so easy to come to Australia and apply to stay here.  Students can do "post graduate" studies without having completed their first degree.  Students numbers who successfully apply to live here are a hidden number.

Ad hoc population growth is colonisation:

Immigration Minister Chris Evans may have branded Mr Andrews as hypocritical in saying that our intake of migrants to Australia is too high when the Howard government welcomed more than 1 million migrants during its tenure.  (#10;http://www.theage.com.au/national/andrews-call-for-debate-on-slashing-immigration-20091210-km93.html"> Andrews call for debate on slashing immigration, )
However, Kevin Rudd has increased the number of permanent and long-term migrants arriving in Australia to more than 500,000 a year!  John Howard was Prime Minster from 1996 to 2007, and this means his government's increase happened over more than eleven years!

Australia is already under stress from population. We are losing Ramsar wetlands, record numbers of native species, even flagship species, our coastlines are under threat from oceans rising, the Great Barrier Reef, the Murray Darling food bowl and our rivers are being choked by dams and drying. The projections for Australia’s climate make it clear that farmers and other Australians should be prepared for a hotter, drier future. Higher temperatures, less rainfall, and extreme events will affect water availability, water and soil quality, fire risk, loss of wildlife and the proliferation of pests and weeds. Despite the warnings, food producing fertile land, is under threat from urban sprawl.

Ad hoc population growth, without a population policy or scientific assessment of our carrying capacity, is reckless and potentially disastrous!

In fact 'immigration',  at Australia's rate of half a million new people a year,  is an incorrect description for a process that is, to all intents and purpose, that of colonization.

In the letter included below on 2 Sep 09 to the Melbourne Age, Mark O'Connor, author of "Overloading Australia" noted. that contrary to his earlier claims that immigration had been "slashed", Immigration Minister Chris Evans has recently admitted we have "an unprecedented, unplanned migration wave". In 2008 he claimed net immigration was half what the Bureau of Statistics had said it was. Whether this is through design or incompetence, Evans is clearly serving vested interests at the expense of ordinary Australians and, accordingly, should resign. (Note: two other letters published in the Melbourne Age on the same day are also included)

It's no business for big business

SENATOR Chris Evans' claim that immigration should be the nation's labour agency, meaning a continued high intake of migrants, especially younger, skilled workers, is absurd ("Migration rules set for revamp", The Age, 31/8).

The Australian population should be our normal source of workforce. Decisions about who comes to Australia should not be left to employers. Big employers have a long history of making bizarre ambit claims about the numbers they propose to employ. Often the real aim is to create a surplus of job seekers and thus bully governments into giving the go-ahead for short-sighted projects to create jobs.

The liveability crisis should be a higher priority than importing "skilled and willing" (read "temporarily more docile") workers from elsewhere.

Senator Evans bizarrely claims that his "attempts to have a more sophisticated debate about the topic have totally failed". What efforts?

The book Overloading Australia documents him claiming in May 2008 that net immigration was less than half what the Bureau of Statistics says it was. Recently he claimed immigration had been "slashed", when it was soaring. Now he admits we have "an unprecedented, unplanned migration wave". He should resign and be replaced by a minister who serves the Australian electorate, not vested interests.

Mark O'Connor, co-author, Overloading Australia, Lyneham, ACT

It's time to debate, people

I AGREE that it is "time for a reality check on immigration policy" (Editorial, 1/9). I would go further and say it is time for a national population policy. Tim Flannery, in his Australia Day address in 2002, indicated that a population policy was vital for Australia to have an environmentally sustainable future.

He said the way to achieve such a policy was for the nation to engage in a truthful, vigorous debate, together with a government inquiry charged with setting an optimum population target. Once the target had been decided we should determine our immigration policy in light of it. This, Flannery believed, would take most of the hysteria out of the immigration debate.

In my view, the bipartisanship way the major parties have kept immigration policy debate out of the public arena is an affront to democracy. I believe an appropriate forum for debating a population policy would also act as a prophylactic in keeping irrational ideologies out of the debate.

Questions about the boom

THE boom in immigration, resulting from the wholesale granting of permanent residency to international students on the basis of skill credentials obtained here, is at last being reviewed.

The demographic distortion from this influx may have resulted in increased unemployment and disaffection among migrant and native young people.

Any net benefit from the ''education industry's ''export'' earnings might not withstand examination, with the money cycle involving repayment of loans from Australian earnings, plus huge long-term costs to Australia. Issues include the diversion of educational resources to service this trade and the downgrading of the perceived value of Australian qualifications.

Excerpts from Age article Migration rules set for revamp

"Australia's immigration policy is set for an overhaul amid concerns that it is failing to meet the nation's long-term needs, with a record influx of more than 600,000 temporary residents adding to the strain of a growing population.

"...

"New figures to be released today show that Australia's official migration program recorded an intake of 171,318 permanent migrants in 2008-09.

"When the 13,500 refugees and the 47,780 New Zealanders who settled permanently in Australia are included, the migration program saw 232,598 people arriving in the past year, a 12.8 per cent leap from the previous year's record high of 219,098 people.

"But according to figures obtained by The Age, a further 657,124 temporary migrants with the right to work arrived in Australia during the past year. The 11 per cent surge in temporary migrants was fuelled by big increases in foreign students (up 15 per cent to 320,368) and working holiday visas (up 22 per cent to 154,148).

"...

The surge in temporary migrants with a right to work has created an unprecedented, unplanned migration wave. Senator Evans said Australia needed a rational immigration debate, beyond the hysteria about the few hundred boat people who arrive each year.

"...

"Decisions about who came to Australia would be increasingly left to employers ..."

See also: Overloading Australia - new book about Australia's overpopulation problem of 23 Jul 09 by Sheila Newman, Review by sociologist, Katharine Betts of Overloading Australia of 8 Apr 09, "Migration rules set for revamp" in the Age of 31 Aug 09, Want job, will travel in the Age of 31 Aug 09, Workforce ripe for the picking by John Sutton, national secretary of the CFMEU in the Sydney Morning Herald of 31 Aug 09.

My Thanks to Ilan Goldman who posted the extracts from the Australian Senate Hansard on 17 Spetember 2008 to the Yahoo PublicPopForum mailing and to Gloria O'Conner who drew Ilan's attention to this. - JS

The Senate Hansard from which the following were extracted can be downloaded in a 795K pdf file at http://www.aph.gov.au/HANSARD/senate/dailys/ds160908.pdf. The initial #question">question can be found on pages 32-33 of the PDF document, which are actually numbered as pages 18-19. Senator Brown's subsequent #speech">speech can be found on pages 41-42 of the PDF document, which are numbered as pages 27-28

Detail of "Overpopulation" by John Piltre at http://www.progressiveart.com/pitre_page2.htm

#question" id="question">Population Policy (question without notice)

Tuesday,16 September 2008

Senator BOB BROWN (2.33 pm)---My question without notice is to Senator Evans, representing the Prime Minister. Does the government have a population policy? Can the minister tell the Senate whether population growth is essential for economic growth, or is that assumption just plain wrong? If population growth is inevitably needed, is that not an ultimate recipe for planetary breakdown?

Senator CHRIS EVANS---I thank Senator Brown for the question. I think population policy is an important issue confronting Australia and we actually need to have a mature debate over the next couple of years about the development of population policy.

Senator Abetz---I'd say you need to have one.

Senator CHRIS EVANS---Senator Abetz, you keep on interjecting---

Senator Abetz interjecting---

The PRESIDENT---Order! Senator Abetz, we can do without your interjections during question time.

Senator CHRIS EVANS---I actually think it is a serious issue. It was discussed at the 2020 conference and raised by lot of the delegates and it is an issue that the government has been engaging on, particularly in relation to the Treasurer's role, the housing minister's role and of course the environment and climate change ministers' roles. We are working together to try and bring together a broader policy approach in this area.

In terms of my own area, on coming to office I found that the previous government set the immigration planning levels on an annual basis. They just picked a figure annually and there was no context to the selection of the figure and no longer term planning. In our first budget this year the cabinet agreed to my bringing forward next year a longer term planning framework for immigration to this country, which is in part an attempt to deal with that broader population question. We think we need a longer planning cycle. We think we need to deal with those broader considerations. At the moment we have a skills shortage in this country as a result of the previous government's failure to invest in education and training and we are looking to build our capacity by training our own people, but in the short term we do have a need for labour and we are trying to address that.

One of the things I would point to is the changing demographics of the nation. We know that over the period 2010 to 2020 more people will retire than will join the workforce. If you like, 2010 marks the tipping point in the retirement of the baby boomers, and that will exceed the numbers of young people entering the workforce. That is not a temporary thing; this is a longterm demographic shift. It will not rectify itself. We will have a shrinking native-born labour force to supply a growing economy and an ageing population. So there are big challenges in the demographics area, and part of the solution to that will be an increase in migration and, I think, an increase in the overall population, because we will need more workers to support the population and we will need more workers to provide services to those ageing as the cohort of those ageing increases. But there are issues about environmental sustainability that need to be taken into account and there are issues about housing that need to be taken into account.

I suppose your question, Senator Brown, implied that somehow we should respond in a negative way. I think the way to respond is to say that we have a climate change problem and we have to address that problem. Whatever the size of the population, we will have a climate change problem. This government is immediately trying to tackle that climate change problem. We are trying to tackle the problem of water. All of those things need to be taken head-on. Those problems are not fixed by reducing our population or ending immigration to this country. We are serious about housing, we are serious about climate change and we are serious about the environment, but we face other challenges about the workforce and about our demographics. What we are trying to do is bring all that together so that the government has a broad view about these challenges and how we respond. I think we are making good progress on that, and certainly in my portfolio we are very much focusing on those broader issues.

Senator BOB BROWN---Mr President, I have a supplementary question. I thank the minister for the seriousness with which he answered that question. I return again to core question that I asked: is economic growth predicated upon population growth or is that a myth?

Senator CHRIS EVANS---That is a pretty big question to answer in one minute. What I would say to you is that I think economic growth is vital to Australia's future. I think that in the medium term we will need a larger population than we currently have. I think we will have to run an immigration program to deal with the demographic shift and the drop in the workforce. But we also need to tackle those pressing environmental and other problems. The Greens keep raising with me, for instance, the question of climate change refugees and what we are doing to accommodate them. To accommodate them we would have to increase our immigration program. All these things are clearly linked. We are very much focused on the broader population policy issues, but I think we will need continuing economic growth, and I think we will see a continuing modest increase in our population levels over coming years.

#speech" id="speech">Population Policy (speech in response to Senator Evans' answer)

Tuesday,16 September 2008

Senator BOB BROWN (Tasmania---Leader of the Australian Greens) (3.30 pm)---I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship (Senator Evans) to a question without notice asked by Senator Bob Brown today relating to economic and population growth.

I am grateful to Senator Evans for responding to a question that is very rarely raised in this parliament let alone taken on and answered at some length---and that is the question of the role of population in our future. The former Treasurer, Peter Costello, said that population is destiny. I would agree with that, although I think I am coming from a different point of view.

We are on a planet in which there are now 6½ thousand million people, whereas when I was a lad it was half that amount. At the change from the 19th century to the 20th century there were 2,000 million people, which is less than a third of today's population. And we know that by mid-century the population is going to be 9,000 million to 10,000 million people. The world advice is that that simply cannot be sustained. We are now looking at rapidly deteriorating food stores on the planet. We are down to fewer than 50 days of flow-on food availability to meet any great emergency, and the number of people facing starvation around the planet right now is in the millions and increasing rapidly, particularly in Africa but also in parts of Asia, like North Korea.

Because energy drives agriculture, and with the onrush of climate change, the very slow growth in pro -ductivity compared to population, and peak oil, we will be facing a mammoth, chaotic social outcome of too many people with too few resources on the planet in the lifetime of some of us here and certainly in the lifetime of our children. We are obliged to look at this. That is why I asked the government whether it had a population policy, and I do not believe it does. I do not believe the opposition does. The Greens have one which is very general.

I think it is incumbent upon us all to say what we think about the fundamental supposition that the economy needs a growing population if it is to be sustainable. I think that is a fundamental error but it drives all economic policymaking at government level around the world at the moment. If you take the idea that you must have a growing population to have a healthy economy then the planet will implode because the logic of that is that, if the numbers of humans on the planet keep increasing---and we are the biggest, most marauding group of mammals there has ever been on the planet---to just bring other people up to our level of consumption our current population projections say that we will need not one but three or four planets with the resource base of the earth to sustain human population by mid-century. I am talking about 40 years away. It is simply not sustainable.

We as responsible politicians and representatives of the interests of the future of this nation, if not the planet, have to debate this matter. I believe we have to come to the conclusion that we have to devise economic growth that is not predicated on population growth. If not, we have to state at what level we will stop growing the economy because there are too many people. That is an inevitable outcome of the theory that you must have population growth if you are going to have economic wellbeing. It is a fundamental part of the political discourse and yet it is missing from public debate.

One of my major reasons for raising this question is that I get asked about it all over the country. It does not matter what you are talking about, when you go into any size audience somebody will come up and say, 'What about population growth?' So here I am asking that question in the Senate because so many Australians want it debated.

Question agreed to.

What you can do:

Contact Senator Bob Brown to congratulate him for having raised this critical issue in the Senate. His contact details are:
e: ebony.bennett[AT]aph gov au www.bobbrown.org.au
m: 0409 164 603 | p: (02) 6277 3170 | f: (02) 6277 3185