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"It then become a paradox to argue that this diversity is a plus and multiculturalism is an enrichment, while simultaneously arguing for policy which slows this enrichment. Again, a mixed, confusing message." I do not want to get further embroiled in this debate but I will make this final point before bowing out. I am saying that the current policy of high migration is what is slowing down and even reversing this 'enrichment' because it forces planning policy on the hoof with the knock on effect of suburban sprawl and high density development in multicultural communities, the latter of which has a gentrifying effect on the neighbourhood. A slower rate of migration allows for more considered planning outcomes which enables the development of meaningful and cohesive communities. At the end of the day Dennis we will have to agree to disagree on this issue.

Australia takes up to 20,000 refugees a year. This is 10% of our annual migrant intake and it is by comparison a modest number of people, so I think it is important to put things into perspective. The question of how we choose our annual refugee intake is complex and it would be completely out of my area of expertise to try to add to that particular conversation. I am however proud of our rich history of welcoming refugees into Australia and I believe they have done and continue to do so much to enrich our society. If you are against multiculturalism, well that is your prerogative but please do not blame refugees for the environmental impact of large scale migration. Otherwise you are playing into the hands of the big Australia advocates who shout xenophobia every time someone tries to start a serious conversation about the impact of rapid population growth. The issue here for me is about numbers, not about questioning our cultural mix.

That's not the only "development" that is along the Yarra! While they won't be megalomaniac towers, like a massive cascade of levels, this one is typical of the downfall of Melbourne's non-productive economy! A mini suburb approved for Alphington paper mill site.

New mini suburb approved for Alphington paper mill site (3/12/15) | the Age

The creation of a new mini suburb comprising 2500 homes to built on the old Amcor paper mill site in Alphington has been ticked off by an inner city council.

Yarra Council passed a resolution on Wednesday night giving the green light to a revised development plan for the 16-hectare site which would house up to 5000 residents.

It was the former Amcor paper mills, with a huge plant close to Chandler bridge and the Yarra river. The Alphington Paper Mill development, situated on the 16.5 hectare former Amcor paper mill site, is centrally located, 6.5 kilometres northeast of the Melbourne CBD.

The population of Alphington will surge, and overload the already limited schools and add to unemployment. Victoria's economy in the past relied on high levels of manufacturing and productivity, but now it's housing and finance lending.

One Yarra councillor for the area, Stephen Jolly, said the plan would mean too many homes built on the site. "It's sardine central," Cr Jolly said. "They are squeezing the equivalent of the entire population of Alphington into [this site]. And it has no primary school."

And he said the development would be too close to the Yarra River banks – 30 metres in some cases. This is the new standard of living, in little boxes straddling what used to be a place of jobs, industry and productivity.

Your are, as is typical in all media today, suggesting Australian Australians look after everyone else, at significant cost to themselves, their society and their land. It's time the bleeding hearts woke up to the bigger issues that affect our world and our lives, and stopped the 'let's rescue everyone' mantra. Because, in particular, those who chant the loudest, don't appear to lose out with the 'humane' 'generous' policies they support. They don't live in western Sydney, they don't live in Dandenong or Springvale. They don't care about loss of native habitat. They are also usually immigrants themselves, or first generation Australians. Not only do they not care what we have already lost through mass immigration, (environmental damage, beyond repair as well as destruction of the very fabric of our society), they have not 'improved' the lives of the people already here, nor do they themselves believe they should. It's merely about improving the lives of the immigrant or refugee.

Multiculturalism is a failure. It's merely the segregation of the population, into an incoherent, non-cohesive mass of human beings. It's the antithesis of culture and community. And while we pander to the needs and wants of 'others', we lose more and more of our own freedoms. The title of the book reflecting on the damage we've done to our country through immigration and subsequent overpopulation should be titled 'At What Cost'. I for one, would say, it hasn't been worth the cost.

It think Mark Allen acknowledged that population growth was at a significant cost to native inhabitants and to our environment. I think he was arguing that we discriminate in favour of refugees over economic migrants. Of course, even this is problematic, given 1. the enormous number of refugees in the world today; and 2. the difficulty in deciding who amongst refugee applicants are genuine refugees.

Also, could contributors, try to specify the subject in the Subject field above the comment? If you don't, the Drupal content management system will attempt to create a subject from the first words in your comment. I this case, the subject was "Your are, as is typical in". - Ed

"I would add that population policy should be to the benefit of people already living in Australia that is apart from refugee policy which is in the interests of the people arriving." Population policy can be about both. Refugees are a small component of our annual intake and they have played and continue to a play a major role in enriching our multicultural society. Ironically, I believe that due to large-scale migration aimed at boosting GDP, we are making it harder for incoming refugees to build meaningful communities, precisely because multicultural areas such as Footscray are in danger of being gentrified through high density apartment development. The savings in infrastructure that we would make by slowing non-refugee migration could free up more money to help refugees whilst also giving us the opportunity to start to catch up on our existing nationwide 200 billion dollar infrastructure debt.

Older people might think that they have a moral duty to vacate their houses to make room for our societies' "children" i.e young couples with their children. Most of them will not be able to think this through since understanding of Australia's population growth is generally very poor, at least amongst those I speak to. If Australia had a stable population number within its shores with birth numbers equivalent to death numbers and immigration equivalent to emigration then there would be sufficient housing, without needing to stress vulnerable groups and pressure them to vacate their premises. We would have a pretty happy situation for most except developers and those who actually want rapacious population growth to fuel associated enterprises such as shopping centres and barn- like furniture stores; anything that feeds on growth. Australia does not, unfortunately enjoy a stable population but rather one that grows very rapidly with more than half of the growth from overseas migration. So vulnerable older people would be almost half right in thinking they were cooperatively making way for younger Melbourne families - not their own family but at least someone local. But it's more likely that they will be moving out to make way for a family from overseas that already has somewhere to live in that country! It won't be homeless people from anywhere who will be buying their Glen Iris or Murrumbeena bungalows! Is this remotely morally right? Once older people sell up the "family home" it cannot be left to their children. It amounts to stripping property and very modest wealth from middle and working class families. They have paid for their houses paid with after- tax dollars. Nobody has a right to move them on.

Good stuff Mary! John Quiggin has a good article on the financial sector at johnquiggin.com

Erysikhthon or (Erysichthon) was a mythological Thessalian king who chopped down the sacred grove of the goddess Demeter in order to build himself a feast-hall. As punishment for the crime the goddess inflicted him with insatiable hunger, driving him to exhaust his riches and finally, in poverty, devour his own flesh. After Demeter had noticed that this tree in her sacred grove had been chopped down, she told Famine about this, which led to Famine inflicting voracious hunger upon Erysichthon. This caused Erysichthon to grow hungrier and hungrier and the more he ate, the hungrier he got. So, in order to get more money to buy more food, he ended up selling his own daughter, Mestra to a ship's captain as a slave. What we have seen over the years is the globalization of an economic system that sees money as an end in itself—in fact the production of money has become one of the main endeavours of our time, money and its derivatives having become the main trading good on the world’s markets. Perpetual growth is the exponential rise of nothingness, interest upon interest, fire that feeds fire. It swallows and consumes everything in its path. Land, natural resources, housing, living standards, open spaces, biodiversity and wrecks pristine climatic systems. Perpetual growth consumes our forests, ecosystems, native species, and means always loosening environmental laws and policies to cater for Capitalistic growth. We end up devouring the very elements that make up our own identities as Australian! The pursuit of endless growth means diving into an abyss of debt, deprivation, and disadvantage. The costs of growth are never considered, and we end up with an economy addicted to almost forced to keep selling off portions of our country, so much so that we end up eating our own "flesh"- like Erysichthon.

Unfortunately we do not have enough time on our hands to rely upon the ballot box to save Melbourne from the worst of sprawl and concrete boxes. Even if we did, the Greens' infrastructure goals would not keep up with population growth. While their planning policies are an improvement on Labor and the Coalition, it is nevertheless going to be a case of too little too late. Therefore, unless the Greens confront the State and Federal government now on population and infrastructure policy, they will find that they are lulling their electorate into a false sense of security. It is after all their job to hold the government accountable. It would be a tragedy if they were to find themselves dangling the carrot on the very stick that the developers are holding.

I believe that many of the middle suburbs are lacking in housing diversity and while I do not wish to see an end to the quarter acre block, I do realise that there is a growing demographic who are willing to sacrifice larger backyards for all the benefits that come with medium density living. This is why the inner suburbs are so much in demand. It is fair to say that there are a large number of post-war houses in the middle suburbs that are not just not worth retrofitting. Therefore it makes sense to use this opportunity to create more duplexes and in turn make the middle suburbs more appealing to a wider demographic. However there are many houses that are worth retrofitting and many gardens that are worth saving. Unfortunately planners cannot pick and choose on a house by house basis which ones should be saved and which ones should go. Also, upon demolition, the general tendency is that the whole site is cleared, including all of the soil that has been enriched over the years and all the fruit trees etc. Therefore new incentives need to be put in place to ensure that the area that is cleared is restricted to the space in which the new building is going to sit. I agree that the design of new builds is generally poor and they often do not look any better than what replaced the original building. This is why we also need to focus on ensuring that better design guidelines are put in place. It would be impossible to halt all development in Melbourne so it is still preferable in my opinion to direct more development to the middle suburbs where residents would nevertheless have access to at least some private open space and where any poor design outcome is less intrusive than many of the disasterous apartment blocks in the inner suburbs. In the meantime we must continue to exert pressure on the powers that be to ensure that improved measures are put in place.

Quite incredible that the weapons sold to ISIS are now being turned on the suppliers. In the late 1700?s French general, expert strategist, and leader Napoleon Bonaparte would note that, “an army marches on its stomach,” referring to the extensive logistical network required to keep an army fed, and therefore able to maintain its fighting capacity. The current conflict with ISIS in the Middle East is operating, and simultaneously fighting against, is built upon a logistical network based on black market oil and ransom payments.

When militants launched a string of coordinated attacks in Paris on Friday night, they carried AK-47s and were wrapped in explosives. The Islamic State picked weapons from deceased soldiers, slipped arms across borders, and stolen Humvees and guns from fleeing Iraqi forces. ISIS has in the past showed off its American M16 rifles in flashy propaganda videos, and Russian-style Kalashnikovs are considered a favorite. Terrorists and weapons left over from NATO’s intervention in Libya in 2011 were promptly sent to Turkey and then onto Syria – coordinated by US State Department officials and intelligence agencies.

Germany’s international broadcaster Deutsche Welle (DW) published the first video report from a major Western media outlet illustrating that ISIS is supplied not by “black market oil” or “hostage ransoms” but billions of dollars worth of supplies carried into Syria across NATO member Turkey’s borders via hundreds of trucks a day.

Why is ISIS not running out of weapons and ammunition? Where do they continue getting arms? (undated as of 30/11/15) | Quora

Now, the Europe, thanks to the UN and EU, have opened up routes for migration, and the war against "terror" can be spread in further implemented, destabilizing the world and promoting the arms industry.

As if the kangaroos at Somerton have not had enough to contend with being boxed in by new roads, noise and traffic as Melbourne spreads with ever increasing population, now I hear there is a fire in a disused rubbish dump, the smoke from which is about to impact on residents of the area. Fire fighters are undergoing decontamination. The poor kangaroos have probably been displaced by development over the past 5 years but if any of them are still alive then it seems they will be in danger of severe smoke inhalation. Human residents have been advised to stay indoors but kangaroos will not have that "luxury". What an environmental mess!

How can anyone claim that Terrorism is a new ideological trend, and nothing to do with Islam! The US and NATO forces of course have initiated the problems in the Middle East, with intervention and support for terror in Syria, and illegal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. They've open and poked a nest of venomous vipers. The word Islam means "peace", but it's a contradiction in term, an oxymoron. The citizens of France are the ones paying the price for the aggression of their nation. Western aggression in Iraq was directly responsible for the conditions that have given rise to ISIS. Pervasive among these conditions is bitter hatred for America and its allies. Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, had people killed for insulting him or for criticizing his religion. This included women. Muslims are told to emulate the example of Muhammad. Muhammad directed Muslims to wage war on other religions and bring them under submission to Islam. The Qur’an contains injunctions that call both for peace and for violence. The problem is not that they are there; the difficulty is that non-violent and militant Muslims appear equally justified. Christians and Buddhists also have a track record of fanaticism, such as the bombing of abortion clinics and hardliner Buddhists in Myanmar. Today violence racks the Middle East, South Asia and much of Africa in the name of Islam. Meanwhile, many Muslims, like their neighbours of other outlooks, recoil in horror. The goal of French intervention in Mali was then to free the northern part of the country from jihadist occupation, bring back peace, and restore Malian sovereignty on the whole territory. In 2013, the motives were questioned, even by relatively conservative sources, given the massive strategic resources of the African nation, what GlobalResearch described as an ‘El Dorado’ of uranium, gold, petroleum, and strategic minerals. The question that Malians have to ask themselves is: Do they prefer having to fight against jihadists for a long time, or having their sovereignty challenged, and their territory occupied by an ancient colonialist state or partitioned to satisfy a group allied with the colonial power? Islam’s scriptures forbid forcible conversion. Unbelievers are always given a choice: exile or conversion. The punishment for apostasy, or conversion away from Islam, is death. The problem of terror is not just in the Middle East. The Nigerian-based terror group, also known as Islamic State’s West’s Africa province (ISWAP), was responsible for 6,644 deaths in 2014. In comparison, Isis is believed to have killed 6,073 people in the same period. Boko Haram promotes a version of Islam which makes it "haram", or forbidden, for Muslims to take part in any political or social activity associated with Western society. The ideological goal of ISIS is cemented in its name: Their objective is to create a large-scale theocracy made up of Syria, parts of Iraq, Lebanon, and much of Palestine and Jordan. It's a totalitarian, Right wing cult. Islam is not just a religion, but has military, social, legal and political arms. The route to "Peace" is strewn with weapons, and hard-line military tactics, without tolerance for what's "Western". The UN's migration pathway to Europe has created a route for terror to enter, under the guise of humanitarian compassion. What started as a humanitarian-crisis, became a refugee-crisis, a migration-crisis, and now a terror-crisis!

http://www.news.com.au/finance/work/at-work/be-the-one-to-stop-working-for-free-by-asking-the-boss-to-go-home/news-story/c26db405edb4cffa95d0a90ed03b6d43 I heard this on the ABC this am— workers donate more in unpaid overtime to their employers than they do to charities - then found this article. It would have been interesting to have heard this during the time when it was predicted that our biggest challenge in the future would be filling our leisure time. The boundaries between work and leisure are now burred also with technology - i.e. being able to respond to work emails from home. Who are the “leaners”? but I guess that is now quite an old question.

If you want follow some conversation on this one Katie cross to The Conversation: The Trans-Pacific Partnership poses a grave threat to sustainable development (12/11/15) ... under Environment + Energy

I just paused for a few seconds listening to the "Last Post" at 11.00 a.m for Remembrance Day. i couldn't help thinking about the soldiers of WW 2, my parents' generation, who endured torture enslavement, injuries and death to defend "Australia" and now look at what the next generation and the one after have done to follow up. They have sold us out Our control over our destinies is gone along with our rights to protect our environment all with the signing of this TPP.

The greatest pressure on Council budgets is population growth. They are expected to keep providing more and more services, expand their spending, and keep blowing out their budgets.

Councils do not have the legislative powers to change laws, so State governments dump Councils with the costs of population growth, and limited powers to prevent it. So much money can be sunk into Planning Objections, to be over-ruled by VCAT and property developers, that Councils must end up reluctant to represent the rate-payers.
Dis-economies of scale end up blowing out Council costs.

Governments are reluctant to increase charges and taxes, but Councils just keep increasing rates with impunity, with no reviews.
Population growth in Australia is more a consequence of government immigration policy than what's going on in the country's bedrooms.

While our attention is diverted by "boat people" and the refugee crisis, the bulk of our population growth is arriving on our front door!
Oliver Hartwich, and a colleague from the Centre for Independent Studies, sent a survey to all 560 Australian local governments (mayors and senior executives) to ask how they responded to population growth and whether their revenues were adequate. They received 121 responses, covering a good range of metropolitan and regional councils, large and small.

More than half of respondents said they had put up their rates “to cope with population growth”. One third said explicitly that population growth “damaged their bottom line”, which is not what should happen when more potential taxpayers arrive. Indeed, economies of scale in administration might even warrant lower taxes for existing ratepayers.
VICTORIANS will be stung with an average rates rise of $67 in 2015-16. Residents of Murrindindi in the state’s northeast growth corridor will pay the highest rise of $145 on average.

According to Ian Lowe, "What seems a modest rate of population increase, well below what has been recently experienced in south-east Queensland, actually doubles the cost to the community of providing infrastructure. The population increase only adds 2% to the local council’s rate income and the state government’s tax receipts, so it is obvious why we are fighting a losing battle to keep pace with the needs of the growing population. Thurow concluded that any nation whose population increases at a rate of more than 2% will probably go backwards economically".

Why We Need to Stabilise Our Population (June 2010) by Ian Lowe | Issues Magazine

The "welcome culture" is a German word not born of custom but created to establish one in Germany. It was coined by politicians a few years ago. It was originally meant to be the siren call that would attract people from other countries to come to Germany and compensate for a big shortage of skilled workers. These days the term is used to encourage help for the hundreds of thousands of refugees coming to Germany. As the Germans share their bread and resources with the refugees, Angela Merkel made clear in her speech that she won’t accept Italy, Greece or Hungary not pulling their weight and opening their borders. According to the UN’s refugee agency, almost 1.8 million have gone to Turkey, more than 600,000 to Jordan and 1 million to Lebanon – a country whose population is just 4 million. While Turkey has been very generous in providing immediate care for the large inflow of refugees, it now faces the challenge that the overwhelming majority of refugees no longer live in camps but rather in the wider Turkish society. Several UN and other international agencies recommend that more countries open themselves to immigration. The OECD's chief economist, Ignazio Visco, said in mid-July 2000 that "immigration confers small net gains to the host country." In reality the flow is uncontrolled, uncounted, and at least seven times as large — with no end in sight. Three thousand are arriving every day — on the island of Lesbos alone — so the numbers are staggering. Almost all asylum seekers prefer to go to Western European nations such as Germany, where wages are high and public support is generous. In a borderless Europe, authorities will face challenges in keeping refugees in the country to which they are assigned. Yet while Europe struggles to find a solution to the millions asylum seekers making perilous journeys there, Saudi Arabia – less than 2,032.5 km from Syria and with resources at its disposal – has been largely unresponsive to the crisis. According to the UNHCR there are around 500,000 Syrians living in Saudi Arabia, but they are not classified as asylum seekers, and it is not known when they arrived in the affluent country. No Gulf country has signed the U.N. Convention on Refugees, an accord standardizing the level of treatment of people fleeing to new countries. Meanwhile, Germany announced that it will bring border controls back into action Sunday and will temporarily leave the Schengen system, claiming it can not longer cope with the overwhelming amount of asylum seekers crossing the border from Austria. The UN has given refugees are great sense of entitlement to access Europe, and the West, and they are obliged to accept the human avalanche. While nominally "Christian" countries struggle, with this heavy obligation, the Arab States are privileged, and are able to preserve their living standards and their wealth. "Ageing countries" exist because of declining birth rates. They are taking on their right to secure a sustainable population size, and their living standards. It doesn't meant they have a moral obligation to take on more asylum seekers!

I did not mean to imply that townhouses are the domain of migrants. My argument is that other cultures, based on my observation, are less perturbed by denser living arrangements. This is evidenced by living standards overseas, and the demographics of people in Australia who show political concern about crowding. This is also based on discussion at my very diverse workplace, where there is a clear division. Why this is so I wont speculate on. I also note fewer younger people are worried, so there is a generational aspect as well, though young people today fight for nothing unless explicitely authorised and told to anyway.

Yes Megan, this is what I think is happening. Our "standard of living", or state of civilisation is being liquidated for profit and power. Kind of like inheriting a house, then tearing it apart to make some money. But what is happening, is the system is geared so a few beneficiaries benefit from the liquidation and everyone else pays. Housing is one of the big ways it is done, but not the only. We are in the "deconstruction" phase, where we pull apart what others have built with blood, sweat and tears. Almost all of it is done by people who have no right or mandate to do so. You can also see it with respect to vital freedoms, culture, civic rights, they are all being deconstructed. Listen to the way people talk about migration. It often invokes ideas of sacrifice, dealing with unwanted change, etc. In the past, migration was considered to be only for our benefit. Now, it is used to create laws to limit freedom and lower living standards due to some obligation. So essentially, the future standard of living for the young and future generations is being quite literally taken from then, for profit today. Their space is being torn apart and divided, and the economic system is altered to cater for this. The politicians struggle to understand why they cant balance the budget, or why there is a constant state of economic crisis... It also therefore indicates it is NOT just a planning issue, as some seem to suggest. The planning issues exist because the new normal created by the elite permits it, recommends it, and considers it factually sound. We will see more and more "extreme" groups emerge, like Reclaim and the newly minted ALA, because of this. There is another factor though, many will simple leave. Australia may suffer a brain drain as people will find better opportunities elsewhere. I am considering this seriously myself.

What you will tolerate is relative to what you started with, what you are used to and what your peers have. Any step up will be welcome, I would imagine if one's main reason for re-locaing is economic. (For some refugees , re-locating for other than economic reasons could conceivably be or have been actually a step down in economic and living circumstances compared with what they had originally.) So with high economic migration to Australia it is a case of someone's gain being at the expense of the incumbent population. Those who live in Australia especially in the bigger cities see a constant decline in their lived environment. Eventually it will all seem normal and no-one will remember the way it was in the year 2000 or even in 2015. There will be a new "normal" with far more concrete , far less green, far less space, far fewer trees, hardly any native animals or birds in the urban and suburban environment. What people hate is to have their well- being, their amenity, their wealth stripped from them. The pain will go away when there is no-one left who remembers and if change is slow enough not be in -your -face every day.

The study, on the housing crisis in Sydney and Melbourne, which was conducted by founding director of the Centre for Population and Urban Research at Monash University Dr Bob Birrell and former Deloitte Analytics partner David McCloskey, estimates that Sydney and Melbourne will receive around half of the 240,000 people expected to migrate to Australia every year until 2022, which will require Sydney to build another 308,000 dwellings and Melbourne another 355,000, if they are to accommodate both overseas migrants and a growing local population. The authors note that although current urban policy is aimed at housing a growing population, based largely on immigration levels. It's a deliberate policy, based on great favoritism for the housing industry, and real estate. The report notes the strain that an increasing number of older people living alone in detached houses will have on the market, especially as data shows that the share of older households living in detached dwellings does not start to decline significantly until people reach 75 years of age. It's an admission that our living standards won't be maintained, but downgraded. It's a cruel way of dividing the community against older people who are "hogging" the market and stalling "progress". The inner and middle suburbs of Sydney and Melbourne, as of 2011, has 50 to 60 per cent of the separate housing stock was occupied by older households… They are meant to shove-off and allow young people to move in, by building apartments and towers. The divisive policy will create tension and pressure on the community, but the fact that more than half of the new home occupiers will be from overseas will be ignored. It's all about a stagnant, non-productive shallow economy, addicted to construction and housing, and little diversity!

The study as outlined in a recent article in The Conversation compares the recent pattern of dwelling approvals by housing type in Sydney and Melbourne and concludes 'that there are too few separate houses being approved in both cities and too many apartments, especially in Melbourne.'

This backs-up what I have been saying at workshops for the past several months; that the current high-density apartment building boom in Sydney and Melbourne will have no meaningful impact upon slowing urban sprawl in the medium to long-term. This is because more than 90 percent of new apartment approvals in Melbourne 'are predominantly tiny 60 square metre or smaller dwellings with no access to protected outdoor space' and 'are totally unsuitable for raising a family'. Furthermore they are tiny because 'investors prefer to buy at prices below $600,000'.

This raises two important points. The first is that we need to be clear that the vast majority of Public Transport Orientated Development (TOD) in Melbourne and Sydney is aimed at property investors and secondly that it would likely cost more than 600,000 dollars to purchase a unit that is even remotely suitable for raising a family. This means that it is highly unlikely that the people who are currently forced to live in the car dependent outer suburbs could ever afford to live in the TOD that is being built today.

The author of the article calls for a sharp increase in detached dwellings to make up the shortfall but doesn't specify how this can be achieved without increasing development on the urban fringe. He also doesn't question the high rate of population growth that is greatly exacerbating the problem.

Interestingly he does say that migrants may eventually end up by-passing Australia altogether and that those who choose to stay will have to make adjustments to their lifestyle such as delaying starting a family. This feeds into another point that I often raise; that if you have a population policy based upon raising GDP and stimulating the property market, the town planning outcome is such that it becomes increasingly more difficult for new migrants to feel part of a community. This has a profoundly negative impact upon refugees and other people who come here in order to feel part of meaningful and supportive society.

Fortunately the issue of population is discussed in the comments section which is well worth a read.

The root of Sydney and Melbourne’s housing crisis: we’re building the wrong thing (2/11/15) | The Conversation

"Sustainable" is such a generic, almost meaningless word now, and a victim of over-use. The word is used to justify what's actually not sustainable, as an oxymoron. Why leave out the word "population" from the Party's name? It's too general, and too bland. The Party should not be coy in addressing population growth as the "everything" issue. Perhaps Better, not Bigger would have been a better name for the Party, considering it's agenda of addressing the social-economic dystopia of BIG! The addiction cycle of population growth won't be stopped with soft-footing, and edging around the topic. So much of our economy is addicted to housing, construction and real estate. It means keeping the growth machine rolling, to keep up the artificial demand for housing. We've been so conditioned to thinking anything about "population" and "immigration" is race-based, and thus shunned - not debated. The immigration issue is dominated by the debate on asylum seekers, and the bulk of our growth is not discussed. The media treat population growth as an inevitable truth, one that has to be planned for! There's no place for being shy, or reluctant to mention the P word for population in this political agenda!

I believe that policies and planning need to be primarily about and considerate of the people living in a given place right now, today and their children rather than about people who may come to the country from overseas tomorrow or any time in the future. Whether urban density is increased by covering more of the soil with dwellings or making buildings higher to fit in more people, densification must make it increasingly difficult to practice permaculture in our cities. As i understand it, permaculture requires soil, water and sun. The closer people in their dwellings are squeezed together the less possibility there is to grow anything. Your neighbour's 2nd storey extension on your north boundary will most likely be be the end of your plans to grow corn and green vegetables. The only possibility I can think of to mitigate something as devastating as lost sunlight, blocked by a high building is a system of mirrors but ultimately the mirrors will, themselves block out sunlight. The effects of blocked sunlight extend to the generation of electricity with solar panels installed on the roof of your house. Once you get a 3 storey block of apartments next door, the sunlight will be blocked from the panels on the roof of your single storey house. In any multi storey building it is only the top floor that actually has a roof on which to put solar panels. I conclude that population growth needs to be slowed right down with a major cut to non-refugee migration (by far the largest part of Australia's intake from overseas) in order for planning for sustainability to have any hope of making sense and achieving its goals.

Year after year, Australia has twice as many births as deaths. Latest ABS figures claim 298,400 to 155,500, a ratio of 1.92. Childless-by-choice, why then, are my taxes strewn over the breeders to increase the birth rate still more? Treasurer Morrison, don't tinker with the shonky 'Family Tax Benefit A and B". Abolish them completely. Vote bribes in exchange for middle-class tax churn. Stop the whinging by the bleeding hearts industry: women who are too lazy or too stupid to use birth control deserve to be miserable. None of the big name self righteous charities spend a cent here on family planning. Local government can (and did) fund baby health centres. States can fund schools. Federal can fund universities and TAFEs. Double the number of children and child care costs twice as much. Schools cost twice as much. Hospitals cost twice as much, Disability NDIS cost twice as much. Did our entire political class fail state school arithmetic?

This story is very touching. It gives me hope for all the critters out there and reminds me why I remain an unofficial wildlife carer. If the powers that be knew what animals I have, and have had, pass through my hands, they would blow a gasket! This way, people can always drop in with the sick and injured and know that they will be loved and cared for to the absolute best of my abilities...and no-one will come take them and kill them simply because they no longer fit in!

Even some of the exporters themselves are complaining about live export cruelty. After evidence of sledgehammers being used in Vietnam to kill cattle, live export industry bosses finally recognised in March 2015 that there was a serious problem in Vietnam. They responded with a “crisis meeting” and a “6 point plan”. The fact that 5 out of 6 points in the industry’s action plan address things the industry should already be doing reveals just how dire the situation in Vietnam was. Sending live animals to under-developed third world countries inevitably means that there's going to be little control over care and slaughter of animals. Animals Australia says it has lodged three more legal complaints relating to the video footage, concerning widespread ESCAS breaches during the recent Eid al Adha festival, involving thousands of sheep in Kuwait, Oman and the UAE. Already Saudi Arabia is under fire for their massive breaches of human rights. How can animals be protected with any "animal rights"? How can the ESCAS system be controlled, from Australia, once the animals are in the Middle East? If the rules were being properly enforced then re-offending export companies would be facing criminal charges by now. “The situation in Kuwait during the Festival of Sacrifice was particularly egregious as Animals Australia had warned the Australian government eight weeks earlier that export laws were still being breached there, with hundreds of sheep facing brutal slaughter,” said Lynn While, chief investigator for Animals Australia. Rather than focusing on addressing breaches of regulations, exporters were allowed to send three more shiploads of sheep to Kuwait and those hundreds turned to thousands of animals brutalised during the Festival of Sacrifice - of Festival of Suffering. Animals Australia’s investigators witnessed terrified sheep being dragged through the streets and stuffed in car boots in suffocating 48°C heat, in the three Middle East markets. Wellard chief executive officer Mauro Balzarini said ESCAS compliance costs importers hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost sales and similar amounts in extra staff and costs, for exporters. The system is broken, but one reason only, why export laws are being ignored and that is because there are no meaningful consequences for breaking them! There's unconditional support for the live export industry, from Barnaby Joyce and our government, because the industry has become "too important" to lose! Thank God for Animals Australia. How can anyone watch this footage and continue to support this vile trade. Is this industry and government incapable of compassion? Continual claims that ESCAS works, yet they tell that to the 10,000 sheep that were brutalised. There should be no compromises, or agreements. The live export trade must end!

"President of the Czech Republic (2003-20130 says there is no 'human right' to migration and that civic rights are more important than human rights." What's given migrants "rights" is the UN and their one world agenda. What's primarily important is the welfare and security of the host nations, not the UN agenda of spreading people over Europe. The UN should be at the fore-front in ensuring world peace and ending foreign interventions and disturbances. The UN should be a the forefront in assuring that each government provide water, food, health care, sanitation and education for their population, and maintain sustainable population sizes. Exporting people spread problems, and resentments. What's the UN done to protect Syria from intervention, and assure good government? They simply endorse the evacuation of the people into Europe, and expect the countries to comply? The human "right" to migrate has given the evacuees a massive sense of entitlement to resources and welfare at the cost of existing citizens.

Page 31 of today's Australian paper newspaper Oct 15 reports the following ....... MOGULS JOIN THE RUSH TO SELL Greg Brown SITES Rich listers Kerry Stokes and Peter Scanlon have joined the list of cashed up private investors who have put property on the block to capitalise on the sweltering prices on offer. Mr Scanlon's investment house Hume Partners has appointed CBRE Melbourne City Sales to market four commercial properties as one 7896 sq.m site. Known as the Spencer Portfolio, the West Melbourne site covers the properties at 83-113 Batman Street, 371 Spencer Street, 355 Spencer Street and 102 Jeffcott Street. The Batman Street part of the site already has approval for 522 apartments. It is expected to entice Chinese parties looking for sites in West Melbourne. CBRE's Mark Wizel said it was one of the largest sites offered in Melbourne this year, while Josh Rutman said demand was hot for sites in West Melbourne. Meanwhile in Perth, Mr Stokes' Seven Group Holdings ..................etc etc.

The assumption is that the terms "racist" or "xenophobia" are supposed to be descriptive of a reality. In a few cases, inadvertently, it is. But the terms are used because they work. They use terms like this precisely because it gives a political one up when used. It works because the accused goes into a defensive posture and the West has a very strong reaction to it. People complain about "racist" being overused, but they adjust rhetoric and moral stances and allegiences to avoid the term, which validates the power of the term, which encourages more use. Its only overused because people consistently and reliably react in a very predictable manner. Why would they drop a political weapon that works so well? The pro FTA lobby use it only because they can rely on the defensive reaction it will elicit. So in this sense it is not overused, any more than the guns of the enemy firing at you are not overused as long as you keep going into retreat. The only solution is to ignore and maintain an offensive stance.

The UN are part of the problem. Instead of peace keeping, and negotiations to protect peoples being involved in wars and conflicts, they see their one way solution as evacuating people, and spreading them out across Europe and the West.

The UN is launching "The 2030 Agenda," hailed as the "new universal agenda" for humanity. The New World Order is not a conspiracy theory, it is very real, an agenda that has been acknowledged openly for decades, yet still people wave it away as if it is a "fringe" belief.

The United Nations is now in the process of defining Sustainable Development Goals as part a new sustainable development agenda that must finish the job and leave no one behind. This agenda, to be launched at the Sustainable Development Summit in September 2015, is currently being discussed at the UN General Assembly, where Member States and civil society are making contributions to the agenda.

For example, one of the goals of the sustainable development crowd is to push the human population into giant “megacities” and to allow nature to recapture much of what has already been settled by humanity.

Towards a sustainable development agenda | United Nations

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon welcomed the 70 winners of the United Nations-sponsored Many Languages, One World contest who wrote “inspired” essays in languages not their own about a new sustainable development path that will lead to an end to poverty and a life of dignity for all.

"Sustainable development" is itself an oxymoron. Not all countries can live like those in the first world as there aren't enough resources. It's an illusion. The population of Africa is said to double by mid century, so if the migrant crisis continues, there will be a homogenized mass of humanity, with poverty and overpopulation spread world-wide.

After World War 2, the global population was 2.6 billion. Now, the overflow is due to 7.3 billion and rising by 80,000 each year! The UN think their "sustainable" goals can be reached, without addressing overpopulation? The UN Refugee Convention was formulated at a different time, and it outdated.