In September, the U.N. panel of climate scientists said that world temperature rises were headed to exceed 2.0C under most of its scenarios. It said that limiting warming would require "substantial and sustained" cuts in emissions.
Australia's new policies under the Coalition government, shifting from an emissions trading scheme, would marginally raise emissions, adding to a problem that many nations were failing to stick to curbs on emissions agreed in 2009.
What will raise emissions is our politically engineered population growth by 2020, estimated to be 25.2 million. The Climate Change Authority has described our the existing emissions reduction target of 5% by 2020 as “inadequate” and “not a credible option”.
In a report, Population growth and Australia's greenhouse gas emission commitments , Bob Birrell and Ernest Healy from Monash University's Centre for Population and Urban Research found "83 per cent of the forecast increase in carbon emissions from 2000 to 2020 is attributable to population growth".
Contradictorily, we are attempting to cut emissions by 5 per cent by 2020. This strategy means our target is actually more like a 25 per cent reduction in per capita terms, to achieve just 5 per cent in total. If 25 per cent is anywhere near achievable, imagine what we could do with a stable population!
No wonder the Australian government is in climate change denial. Our government is still in the big "growth" fixation, rather than willing to admit it's time to slow down and face reality.
No wonder Australia pulled a triple bad start of the UN climate change conference at Warsaw by being awarded Fossil of the Day on the summit’s first day. The award is given by the international Climate Action Network to the country which has done the most to block progress at the climate change negotiations on that day.
Comments
Questions and shows the downside
It questions the assertion in the letter it is responding to that Sydney is an "International city" therefore a destination for the whole world. That assertion was supposed to make us all re-think Sydney and in our minds throw it away as part of Australia. The first letter suited the SMH and this one negates the "don't care" attitude it was meant to engender. On top of that it spells out the economic downside of population growth and we can't have that.
SMH did not publish this letter - wonder why?
Since when did Sydney rescind from Australia's sovereignty and become an "international city", as assumed by Stephen Hegedus? (letters 18/11). This generation should not have to lower expectations of home ownership
and living standards, what was enjoyed by previous generations.
If Manhattan is an example of unaffordable housing, then this is what we need to avoid, not celebrate!
The problem is the Ponzi housing and economic growth scheme, supported and promoted by our governments. While it's easy to point the finger at the greed of investors, and the GFC, they all exacerbate the public's
slide down the Ponzi of endless population growth, and the privileges it gives to the investors and bankers at the pyramid's apex. Such pyramid schemes thrive on accumulating more and more victims, adding to homelessness, debt, unemployment, costs of living and intergenerational declines in life's expectations.
A stable population would level out the costs of housing, and ensure that future generations are not denied the well-being, living standards and opportunities enjoyed by past generations.
Kangaroos and wildlife have no protection
Kangaroos and other wildlife are being forced off their lands, and killed cruelly by on-going human occupation - and various forms of land use. They are hounded and mercilessly being forced out of living in their own country. The cost of feral animals, and livestock for agricultural use, is massive. Property developers are some of the worst land-grabbers, with their concrete and housing construction. People then bring in their pets, vehicles, and lethal baggage, to the detriment of kangaroos - and then accused of causing car crashes and being in "plague" proportions!
Mother Agnes excluded from [Don't] Stop the War conference
Mother Agnes and the ‘liberal’ hawks out to silence her
of 20 November 2013 by Neil Clark on Russia Today
Just when you thought the ‘liberal interventionists’ and neo-cons couldn’t stoop any lower, they just have.
The ‘pro-free speech’ but actually very anti-free speech bullies have got a new target. A 61-year old nun called Mother Agnes-Mariam who has been living in Syria for twenty years and who runs a campaign called Mussahala (Reconciliation).
For the West‘s ‘liberal hawks’ and serial interventionists, this elderly lady, who is working tirelessly for peace and an end to the bloodshed in Syria, has become Public Enemy Number One.
Mother Agnes has been subject to a vicious internet campaign of character assassination, smears and defamation. We’ve been told that she is an ‘Assad apologist,’ ‘Assad‘s favourite nun’- she has even been called ‘the Syrian equivalent of one of Hitler’s brown priests’.
When the liberal hawks and serial warmongers saw that Mother Agnes had been invited to speak at the forthcoming international conference of Stop the War, they had a collective hissy fit.
of 17 November 2013 by Neil Clark
‘Investigative Journalist’ Scahill Takes Swipe at Mother Agnes
of 17 November 2013 by Richard Edmondson
Jeremy Scahill, the “investigative journalist” who once publicly expressed his belief in the official 9/11 story, says he won’t take part in an international antiwar conference scheduled for later this month if he has to share the same platform with Syrian nun Mother Agnes.
Responsible Parenthood and Reproductive Health Act of 2012
The scale of suffering in after the Philippines typhoon has been worsened by the fivefold increase in the population since 1950, from less than 19 million then to almost 100 million today - many of them living in vulnerable coastal zones.
One hectare of mangroves in the Philippines can yield 400 kilos of fish, shrimps, crabmeat, molluscs and sea cucumbers annually, and help feed a further 400 kilos of fish and 75 kilos of shrimps that mature elsewhere.
Mangroves of Bangladesh remain largely unaffected over the years. On the contrary, Pakistan, Thailand, Myanmar, and Philippines continued to suffer the loss of mangroves. With a disappearing rate of more than 2% per year, particularly mangroves in Pakistan and Myanmar remain critically threatened.
The unmet need for voluntary family planning among the Philippines' poor has been high, leading many women and adolescents to become pregnant earlier and more often than they intend. On average, the country's poorest women have two more children than they say they want. The fertility rates among the poor are nearly three times higher than among the country's rich, who have for years enjoyed access to family planning through private providers.
Philippine President Benigno Aquino late last year signed the Responsible Parenthood and Reproductive Health Act of 2012. To poor women in the Philippines, this means that government health centers will have to make reproductive health education, maternal health care and contraceptives available to everyone. It is a life-saving measure that will help end the cycle of poverty in this Southeast Asia island nation.
The good news is that more Filipino couples are now practicing family planning, therefore slowing the growth rate of the country's population, an official of the Commission on Population (PopCom) said. The PopCom support the implementation of the reproductive health (RH) law will further slow down the country's population growth rate.
overpopulation makes people vulnerable to extreme weather
The single biggest contributing factor to the increase in devastation brought by natural disasters in recent years is the rapid growth of the world’s population. Particularly in developing countries such as the Philippines, urban areas are hugely overpopulated meaning more people are naturally in the ‘firing zone’ when disasters strike.
Global population is set to rise to 8 or 9 billion by 2050, and more people will be living in crowded and cramped housing in more extreme places, vulnerable to climate change and weather extremes. Scientists largely agree that it appears that storms will become more powerful as the climate changes.
The problems of Philippines are poor urban planning, an exploding population, climate change and systemic poverty – all contributing factors to the death and destruction left in the super typhoon's wake. The population was very high where the storm made landfall so with those two facts alone would create a potential for a disaster. Not surprising is the little in the media about the role massive overpopulation, and that plays in this disaster--too many people in too small an area with limited resources is a huge reason contributing to the loss of life.
Mangrove regeneration in Northern Samar, about 100 miles (160 kilometers) north of the worst-hit Philippine city of Tacloban, helped minimise damage from the Nov. 8 storm, according to the Trowel Development Foundation, which oversaw the plantings.
According to the WWF, Mangrove forests are one of the world’s most threatened tropical ecosystems. More than 35% of the world’s mangroves are already gone. The figure is as high as 50% in countries such as India, the Philippines, and Vietnam, while in the Americas they are being cleared at a rate faster than tropical rainforests.
ForceChange - Stop the Abuse of Racing Greyhounds
Sign the PETITION: Forcechange
Dear Greyhound Racing NSW Chief Executive Brent Hogan,
A recent inquiry into Australia’s greyhound racing industry uncovered mass euthanasia, mistreatment, drugging, and neglect toward dogs. As the world’s largest dog racing industry, it is imperative that Australia’s standards for treatment are improved and enforced.
Over 3000 greyhounds per year are euthanized after being deemed unprofitable, while only 52 have been adopted into family homes. Reasons for this mass euthanasia span from injuries to simply being not fast enough to race. Some injured dogs are given pain-killing narcotics and forced to race anyway, which causes further detriment to an injury and could result in permanent disability.
Other dogs are given performance-enhancing drugs such as hormones, or conventional drugs such as cocaine, caffeine, or amphetamines which are unlikely to show up on a test of a dog’s blood. Like in humans, these drugs can have adverse effects on the cardiovascular and nervous systems.
Veterinarians report that many dogs surrendered by the racing industry arrive in poor condition. Female dogs grow feeble after birthing too many puppies, while others show signs of neglect and starvation. Some even require emergency treatment – one dog lost its eye after an angry owner hit it with a belt buckle.
I demand that tighter regulations be imposed to cut down on Australia’s dog racing cruelty. Fewer dogs should be bred per year to cut down on the rate of unwanted dogs, while more funds should be allotted to adoption programs and shelters that take in the industry’s unwanted dogs. Owners that neglect and force drugs upon their dogs should immediately lose their ability to race and breed greyhounds.
Sincerely,
[Your Name Here]
Russia Today remembers the 50th anniversary of JFK's murder
As the 50th anniversary of JFK's murder on 22 November approached, the mainstream media (msm) and phony alternate media, could no longer, with any credibility, continue to ignore the late President John Fitzgerald Kennedy. In 1991 Oliver Stone, for a while, awakened interest from the broader public in Kennedy with his epic movie JFK starring Kevin Costner. Costner played Jim Garrison (1921-1992) the District Attorney of Orleans Parish, who tried to bring the murderers of JFK to justice and, upon whose book, On the Trail of the Assassins, JFK is based.
Since then, the msm recommenced its disappearance of President Kennedy, who if nothing else, was handsome, glamorous, witty and charming. At 43 years of age upon his inauguration in January 1962, he was the youngest ever President of the United States. Any other former President with those qualities and nothing else, would have been written about extensively in the msm in past decades. Instead, his story was forgotten except for the occasional sensationalised reporting of alleged sexual indiscretions by Kennedy.
In recent weeks, a supposed 'commemoration' of the approaching 50th anniversary has begun by amongst others, Australia's SBS television, consisting mostly of 'documentaries' which conceal most of the important facts about him and his murder. Instead, they focus on his romance with Jacqueline and trivial controversies. One such 'controversy' is Australian detective Colin McLaren's theory that the fatal shot came from a car directly behind the President. His 192 page book, which addresses not one of the other controversies of the day nor anything else about President Kennedy, contains no section of other works on the assassination of Kennedy. Why the SBS considers credible any 'researcher' who has not referred to the many other published works on Kennedy's assassination is not clear.
To the contrary, Russia Today published in a country, which was three times saved from the devastation of nuclear war by President Kennedy's courage, have begun to make known the true significance of JFK and the conspiracy to murder him. The article is 50yrs after JFK assassination: Choose your side in war on freedom of 18 Nov 2013 by former BBC journalist Tony Gosling.
One other site on which credible reporting of the 50th anniversary is to be found is Global Research (GR) although I feel that the issue deserves more prominence by GR. The republished review of James Douglass's excellent JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters is most helpful.
Where does one start with stopping animal mistreatment?
I watched the program about greyhounds and the lasting image for me was that a dog could be wagging its tail one minute and a few minutes later it had been drained of blood, its dead body mere refuse. Apart from the exploitation and cruelty to the dogs, what is this doing to the psyches of the veterinary nurses who do this work?
The ABC ran a show last night the horrors of Surabaya Zoo. Images were the mixed species version of the Rake's Progress to Bedlam. Worse. It was appalling. I knew about it already from a friend who has lived in Indonesia, for many years. Animals in shocking condition crammed in to tiny, filthy cages, malnourished, poisoned even with food contaminated with formaldahide. Animals Australia has put in enormous efforts on behalf of exported live cattle but still it goes on. The horrors of human treatment of animals is overwhelmingly terrible and it is hard to know where to start in changing anything. Somewhere I guess is the answer.
Moon travel is the next option
I was just reading about Naveen Jain's ideas to get to space in private expeditions. Mars may be a bit far fetched but I don't think that the moon is. let's just hope fracking isn't the first thing that happens there.
Poor defense of economists in this comment
On a separate issue, I feel I must defend the honour of demographers and economists. Rarely has a task given me less pleasure because in the main, both vocations warrant the criticism levelled at the start of Sheila's post. Having said that, there have been some notable exceptions in both categories that deserve a favourable mention.
[Candobetter.net ed: The writer - a serial spammer - placed a link to an online handbag sales site, which we removed. He did not provide any notable demographers or economists. Of course, they do exist, but they don't get publicity in the mainstream media. We have published articles by economists on candobetter.net. We will publish sensible articles and comments on reform in democracy, environment, population, land use planning and energy policy from anyone or any discipline as long as there is no contravention of the law. We do not censor. If a person wants to argue with our main thrust, if they submit, for instance, a growthist propaganda article, we are more likely to publish them as a comment than an article, and to argue their points. This is because the mainstream press already provides wall-to-wall growthist propaganda.]
Japan slashes greenhouse gas emissions target
Government negotiators and observers reacted with dismay at Japan's announcement that it will aim for a 3.8-percent cut in emissions by 2020 from 2005 levels, replacing a more ambitious goal to slash them by 25 percent from 1990 levels.
Japan's new target amounts to a 3 per cent rise from 1990 levels, a sharp reversal from the 25 per cent reduction target.
Hiroshi Minami, Japan's chief negotiator at UN climate change talks in Warsaw, says the nuclear shutdown has forced the country to lower its "ambition level."
Japan takes 39.3% of Australia’s black coal exports – the largest share, with a total of 115.3 million tonnes exported last financial year. The majority of Australia's thermal coal exports, mainly used for power generation, go to Japan. Australia can hardly be surprised by this revelation! Australia is actively promoting and exporting climate change!
Coal mining for export is causing significant local and regional environmental impacts and increasing greenhouse gas emissions. Australia will eventually compete with Qatar as the largest LNG exporter by 2020 as two-thirds of global investments in liquefied natural gas will all be placed in the country.
Energy-related greenhouse gas emission is predicted to reach a 20 per cent increase to 37.2 gigatonnes by 2035. ''Some people talk about the 'green growth' in Asia. several Asian countries so far have been impressive and replicable and the region's commitment to low-carbon green growth represents a move away from the old economic thinking of "grow first and clean later." However, emerging Asia's carbon emissions remain high and failure to act swiftly could increase mitigation costs by two to five times and lock in a high-carbon footprint for decades to come. "Green" and "growth" are contradictions in terms!
World Energy Outlook 2011 warns that by 2017 all CO2 emissions permitted for the world to meet the Cancun Agreement's two degree warming goal will be already "locked-in" by existing power plants, factories and buildings.
Japan's environment-friendly technological advances, and slow economic growth, indicates that the country may still emerge as a world leader in reducing emissions of greenhouse gases. Thanks to its ageing population, it’s CO2 output will reduce automatically without targets.
Peace only possible when Syrian 'rebels' masters held to account
Thank you for this informative and insightful article. I can see the Syrian armed forces, along with the rest of Syria, are paying a terrible price to defend their country against sadistic killer proxies of the United States and its allies. 42,000 (27,000 +15,000) military dead alone over two and a half years exceeds Australia's death toll during the same period of time in that largely pointless conflict known as the First World War. Fortunately, unlike Syria, Australia suffered few civilian casualties in the First World War, whilst the total Syrian dead so far number 120,000 according to one source.
World Peace will only be possible if the criminal leaders in countries which have supported these crimes against Syria are held to account.
Booming housing market leaves first-home buyers behind
The Age reveals that first home buyers made up a record low 12.2 per cent of new housing loan commitments in Victoria in September, a sharp fall from the peak of 31.6 per cent in May 2009.
''I can see the difficulties for young and first home buyers of getting into the market,'' said shadow treasurer Chris Bowen, who labelled the affordability crisis a serious national issue.
It's interesting that we now have a Shadow Treasurer, the previous minister for Immigration under Labor, commenting on the blowout of the housing bubble, who is seeing the evidence of high rates of immigration - and loose borders that allow foreign investors to strangle the real estate market.
Economist Saul Eslake, a member of the National Housing Supply Council, said vested interests from property owners and politicians meant policies that could support first home buyers - such as the abolishment of negative gearing and lower costs for new developments - were unlikely to ever see the light of day. The housing Ponzi scheme is being driven and manipulated by investors, who create and guarantee their portfolios delivered by high rates of population growth and heavy support for domestic and foreign investors.
Booming housing market leaves first home buyers behind, says Chris Bowen
All Ponzi schemes eventually collapse. Back in February 2012, Deakin University’s Philip Soos said that the only thing that prevented Australian house prices from crashing during the 2008 GFC was the first-home owners’ boost, who believes the sector is now operating like a Ponzi scheme. According to Soos, the tipping point for the mark will come when “the household sector is so overloaded with debt there exist no more ‘greater fools’ willing to commit to a lifetime of debt serfdom to purchase property”.
Australian housing a Ponzi scheme and the housing bubble will burst
Sooner or later you run out of unsuspecting new investors and the whole thing collapses.
The end of the housing bubble will hurt our economy, but it's time to make the transition to a real and productive economy, rather than the predatory one of mortgages, accumulating more and more potential buyers (victims) into the scheme, and the strangle-hold property developers.
Kevin Rudd resigns
Kevin Rudd resigned from parliament, with his apology to the Stolen Generations as the highlight of his prime-ministership, predictably saying it was time he gave something back to his family.
Mr Rudd said that as prime minister he navigated Australia through the great financial crisis without a recession or mass unemployment, and maintained the nation's AAA credit rating. His population growth drive probably was the band-aid that plastered over the cracks in our economy. It's a no-brainer, quick-fix to economic stimulus, if one ignores the ongoing costs of growth.
The Kyoto Protocol on climate change was ratified, WorkChoices overhauled, the so-called Pacific solution dismantled and an apology issued to the Stolen Generations.
He staged stimulus that worked very well in the face of the GFC. Although many observers have a philosophical objection to giving away cash, households spent it with abandon.
Kevin Rudd's 2010 declaration of support of a "Big Australia" followed the federal Treasury's Intergenerational Report that "predicted" Australia's population would rise from about 22 million to 35.9 million in 2050. Rather than "predict", Rudd actually planned to engineer it.
Thanks to his no-apologetic support for "big Australia", Labor privileged housing markets as a protected asset class, and used it as mechanism for economic reform, and support for the privileged. The demand for housing ensured that prices sky-rocketed, and the number of homeless overwhelmed shelters - despite Rudd's time as homeless himself as a child. The rush to property speculation which prevents the RBA from lowering interest rates enough to bring down the dollar.
Rudd's popularity dipped dramatically in 2009 and 2010, and caucus elected Julia Gillard in his place. She assured the public that she didn't want Australia to rush into "big Australia", but a sustainable one. She appointed Tony Burke as Minister for Sustainable population. She later back-flipped and promoted ongoing high rates of growth! ''I support a population that our environment, our water, our soil, our roads and freeways, our buses, our trains and our services can sustain.''
Tony Abbott had warned in the 2010 debate that Australian cities were ''choking'' and that population was growing ''in an out-of-control and unsustainable way''. We are yet to hear of a broader immigration policy from Abbott.
Kevin Rudd pursued his climate change agenda with the original CPRS legislation. Rudd claimed that climate change was not just an environmental challenge. Climate change he described as an economic challenge, a social challenge, and actually represents a big challenge on the overall question of national security. His government ratified the Kyoto protocol on climate change, and promised overhauls of health funding and industrial relations. However, Rudd failed to allow the then climate change minister Penny Wong to bring a proper discussion to the full cabinet at Copenhagen conference. There's no way of hiding the link between rising greenhouse gas emissions, and anthropogenic climate change!
Kevin Rudd's most enduring legacy was the rise and rise of vested interests, which was not in the national interest but not in certain sectional interests. With heightened immigration rates, the rush to form bogus "colleges" to gain PR meant that overnight we had "skills shortages" of hair dressers, cooks, chefs and a sundry array of other lesser skilled jobs.
At present growth rates of close to 2%, Australia’s population will reach 42 million by 2050, six million more than the Federal government’s 2010 Intergenerational Report’s projection, and is a policy he publicly supported in the last weeks of Rudd’s Prime Ministership.
Images in "Gimme Shelter" video take stand against war
Whilst Sir Michael Jagger, since he was knighted in 2002 may not have been particularly outspoken against war and injustice, he and his band were notably outspoken against the Vietnam War in the 1960's. In this spirit, the embedded video of their 1969 hit Gimme Shelter features many images of the US Government's murderous war against the Vietnamese, Cambodian and Lao people in which at least 3 million died. There are also other images of other controversial political issues including the Blockade of Cuba and 9/11. The first image in this video is of President John F. Kennedy who tried to end the Vietnam before he was murdered 50 years ago on 22 November 1963.
Editor's Note (29/1/2022): To understand why the above Video of the Rolling Stones' "Gimme Shelter" has been made unavailable, please read Universal Music Group and YouTube Agree to Forget About Fair Use (27/6/2014) | Public Knowledge by Michael Weinberg:
Today Public Knowledge artist-in-residence Elisa Kreisinger unveiled a new blog post detailing how Universal Music Group (UMG) and YouTube turned their backs on fair use. You should read her full story here, but the short version is that YouTube and UMG agreed to let UMG take down videos, even videos making fair use of UMG music. That means that UMG could take down videos that did not infringe on UMG copyrights.
Normally, UMG would only be able to take down videos that could infringe on UMG controlled music. Elisa believes that her mashup video makes fair use of UMG music, and therefore does not infringe on any UMG copyrights. While the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) allows a host like YouTube to keep showing a video if the creator asserts fair use, in this case YouTube decided to ignore Elisa’s argument and let UMG take the video down.
Obviously, this is a problem. The DMCA notice-and-takedown rules were specifically designed to allow intermediaries like YouTube to host controversial content without fear of copyright liability as long as they stayed out of judgment about what did and did not infringe copyright.
Fair use prevents rightsholders from silencing critics with the threat of a copyright infringement lawsuit. By giving UMG the ability to take down videos that use their content regardless of fair use, YouTube has given UMG sweeping power to control what is – and is not – said about UMG and UMG artists. UMG should not be asking for this kind of power, and YouTube should not be granting it.
This agreement also highlights a growing – and troubling – trend in the world of copyright. Rightsholders (and some government officials) have increasingly been calling for “voluntary agreements” to increase rightsholder control and the obligations of intermediaries. The agreement between YouTube and UMG shows what happens when big industry players are brought together to work something out: users lose. Large rightsholders use the voluntary agreement frameworks to undermine key user rights. While things like fair use matter a lot to individual users, it may not be worth it for either side to insist that fair use is protected in a voluntary agreement. Users only realize what happened when something they relied upon – like fair use – suddenly disappears from important platforms.
Fortunately, there is an alternative way to address copyright’s problems. Instead of pulling big players into a back room to cut a deal, we can use the actual legislative process. While no process is perfect, reforming copyright through the legislative process gives the public, users, and smaller content creators an opportunity to participate. It increases the likelihood the improvements will benefit everyone, not just the largest commercial parties.
Our copyright system is in dire need of fixing, but private agreements are no substitute for real policy fixes. As Elisa’s case vividly illustrates, when private agreements undermine fundamental parts of the law everyone except the biggest players lose.
Wikileaks: Secret Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP)
The extraordinarily detailed information on negotiating positions released by WikiLeaks shows Australia repeatedly backing the interests of the US against the objections of countries including Canada, New Zealand, Japan, Singapore and Vietnam on questions involving intellectual property.
The Trans Pacific Partnership is the largest-ever economic treaty, encompassing nations representing more than 40 per cent of the world’s GDP.
Details of secret trade negotiations that could leave Australians paying more for drugs and medicines, movies, computer games and software, and be placed under surveillance as part of a US-led crackdown on internet piracy.
Intellectual property experts are critical of the draft treaty, which they say would help the multinational movie and music industries, software giants and pharmaceutical manufacturers to maintain and increase prices by reinforcing the rights of copyright. It would cause online "piracy" to challenge corporate rights to music and software, and block the sales of generic medicine.
It's about accumulating the corporate powers globally, and overwhelming the rights of governments, individual choices, and our sovereignty.
Canada and seven other countries want to make it clear that internet providers such as Australia's iiNet cannot be held legally responsible for copyright infringement on their networks. In 2012 iiNet went to the High Court to enforce that right. But Australia and the US are listed in the negotiating document as opposing it.
The TPP is the forerunner to the equally secret US-EU pact TTIP (Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership), for which President Obama initiated US-EU negotiations in January 2013. Together, the TPP and TTIP will cover more than 60 per cent of global GDP.
Read the Wikileaks press release here on the Secret Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP)
Irish children also taken from their parents without consent
The kind of shameful treatment of English Children forcibly taken from their natural mothers and forcibly deported to Australia from the 1950's until the 1980's was alsi inlflictded upon many Irish children as the YouTube broadcast of Calre Daly's recent speech to the Irish Parliament shows.
In the speech Clare Daly asks that children, who have been taken from their parents by the Irish state and adopted by other parents, be given help locating their natural parents and that parents seeking to contact their children be similarly helped.
Tracing Rights
Wednesday 13 November Boroondara takes VCAT to Court
10.30am tomorrow morning in Court 12, Ground Floor, 210 William Street, Melbourne.
Tomorrow, Wednesday 13 November 2013, Boroondara Council is taking VCAT to the Supreme Court over a decision
It involved a heritage listed house in a heritage area, where apparently the heritage value was ignored and they approved it to be pulled down and to build a great big block of concrete and glass flats.
This will be a big test of the value of heritage and there might be some of you with time and interest to go and listen to the arguments.
The decision will have great importance to many.
The hearing will commence at 10.30am tomorrow morning in Court 12, Ground Floor, 210 William Street, Melbourne.
States under pressure to allow gas exploration
The Napthine government is facing intense pressure to open Victoria to onshore gas exploration, despite CSG mining being incompatible with agriculture. It would mean ignoring farming communities to give preference to mining companies. Such are the manipulative lobbying powers of gigantic and financially-powerful corporations that they are able to pressure governments for their own financial advantage - contrary to the welfare and concerns of local communities.
The LNG industry claims to be Australia's fastest growing export sector. Companies are refusing to profitably sell gas in domestic markets today so that the gas can be reserved, or hoarded, for sale in 15 or 20 years as LNG for the export market.
In Queensland, Australian industry gas users such as Orica and Alcoa have called for governments to reserve gas supplies for domestic use before the $70 billion suite of LNG export projects. Western Australia - the only state that forces gas developers to set aside reserves -drove a 10 per cent jump in prices compared to a year ago.
In another industry push, they say that Australia can avoid gas supply shortages by expanding operations at offshore and coal seam gas fields, according to the Australian Pipeline Industry Association. However, it won't make the gas any cheaper.
Hoarding supplies guarantees higher prices! Now, the industry claims that Australia can avoid gas supply shortages by expanding operations offshore, and through coal seam gas fields.
Instead of providing much needed cheap natural gas to Australian homes and industry, the industry is giving preference to overseas markets, and higher prices. Nationals leader Peter Ryan has warned that he will oppose onshore gas production if it impacts negatively on the rural environment, water supply and agricultural production.
Despite having one of the largest gas production booms in the country, we could end up with a "shortage" of natural gas - and be forced to explore coal seam gas sources!
East-West Link a crime against Melburnians
The people who are trying to force Melburnians to travel further, and by car at extortionate cost, whilst destroying what little is left of the Royal Park, belong behind bars.
Cutbacks in CSIRO jobs
To add injury to insult, the Coalition government is to "streamline" government spending by axing 600 jobs at the CSIRO. The anti-science brigade will compromise their ability to manage bushfires, staff say.
Acting Opposition Leader Ms Plibersek says the staff reduction is another blow for research and technology in Australia after the Government failed to appoint a science minister.
If the government really wanted to cut back on public service staff, it should be by streamlining governments, and the number of overlapping politicians and the three tiers of government.
All the anti-science flies in the face of the chronic "skills shortage", and the justification for mass immigration, that's undemocratically imposed on our nation.
Another live export expose!
Video released by animal rights group Animals Australia shows bulls exported from Australia to Mauritius being dragged head-first off trucks on to concrete and being kicked and trussed before having their throats slit in the street.
The footage shows bulls being roped at the neck and pulled off a small livestock truck without a ramp, then dragged on the ground of a feedlot by more than seven men during the festival of sacrifice in October.
One bull's horn was broken when it was forced off the truck while another had water thrown over it to make it stand up.
The bulls were hog-tied, including one that had its two front legs stamped on before six men held it down while another slaughtered the bull after two attempts to slash its throat.
The Age: New video of Australian animals being mistreated in Mauritius alarms activists
The exporter responsible is already under investigation for breaches of the live export supply chain assurance scheme, for cruelty in Kuwait.
In an act of defiance and cruelty, Federal Agriculture Minister Barnaby Joyce is planning to actually water down live export rules put in place after the live export ban to Indonesia in 2011.
The WA Liberals are also set to vote on a motion at their State conference at the weekend to remove "red tape" from the live export system. Removing inhibiting "red tape" would free-up the supply chain, and allow more atrocities. Rather than dieting to lose morbid obesity, it's a denial of reality by actually loosening the belt! More animals will be cruelly sent to third world countries, ostensibly to help their "food security", and suffer in the hand of barbarians and savages!
Animals Australia said the latest incident was evidence that the live export system should not be weakened. How much blood do our politicians have on their hands? Rather than patches, they will be knee-deep in the filth!
Swiss to vote on 2,500 franc basic income for every adult
Swiss to vote on 2,500 franc basic income for every adult
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/10/04/us-swiss-pay-idUSBRE9930O62013...
BERNE | Fri Oct 4, 2013 10:55am EDT
(Reuters) - Switzerland will hold a vote on whether to introduce a basic income for all adults, in a further sign of growing public activism over pay inequality since the financial crisis.
A grassroots committee is calling for all adults in Switzerland to receive an unconditional income of 2,500 Swiss francs ($2,800) per month from the state, with the aim of providing a financial safety net for the population.
Organizers submitted more than the 100,000 signatures needed to call a referendum on Friday and tipped a truckload of 8 million five-rappen coins outside the parliament building in Berne, one for each person living in Switzerland.
Under Swiss law, citizens can organize popular initiatives that allow the channeling of public anger into direct political action. The country usually holds several referenda a year.
In March, Swiss voters backed some of the world's strictest controls on executive pay, forcing public companies to give shareholders a binding vote on compensation.
A separate proposal to limit monthly executive pay to no more than what the company's lowest-paid staff earn in a year, the so-called 1:12 initiative, faces a popular vote on November 24.
The initiative's organizing committee said the basic income could partly be financed through money from social insurance systems in Switzerland.
The timing of the vote has yet to be announced, pending official guidance from the government.
(Reporting by Denis Balibouse, writing by Alice Baghdjian, editing by Gareth Jones)
Councils opt for a NIMBY approach to planning!
Victorian Planning Minister Matthew Guy has set out new rules for three zones into which each local council must divide their area. ''Residential growth'' zones enable the highest levels of new housing growth near train lines, shopping strips and the like. ''General residential'' zones are to be used in most residential areas to preserve urban character while enabling moderate housing growth. Finally, ''neighbourhood residential'' zones tightly restrict housing growth.
Fortunately, Glen Eira and Boroondara councils have got in early, exploiting this weakness, or loophole in the legislation, to declare that they don't want all this growth!
Glen Eira council has zoned about 80 per cent of residential land to restrict growth in housing. Similarly, Boroondara is seeking approval to restrict growth in about 80 per cent of residential land. Only 1 per cent of residential land in Boroondara is proposed for the residential growth zone, and just 19 per cent for the general residential zone, despite state government guidance that this should be used in most residential areas. Why should they have their suburbs re-engineered to lose their neighborhood character, and amentiies, and welcome more people?
The Age: Councils opt for NIMBY approach on growth
The article assumes that Melbourne's ridiculously high rate of growth is inevitable, and will continue. It assumes that the rebel councils want the growth to go elsewhere - ie are NIMBYs. If this pattern of councils locking down most of their neighbourhoods continues, along with our third-world levels of population growth, nearly all new housing will be built in Melbourne's outer suburbs and on the urban fringe.
Previous Grattan Institute research (Cities: who decides?) shows early, sustained involvement of residents in decision-making makes it possible to satisfy most people. Well, this is the result of the residents, and councils' decision - to avoid growth that's not in the interests of residents or Melbourne.
There's nothing in the article about agreements on immigration levels, or that 60% or more of our population growth is from record levels of immigration- and thus not inevitable. It assumes that growth is "good" and desirable.
Property development has become a major industry in Victoria, but the trailing costs of population growth far outweigh the economic benefits of the industry. Our economy needs to diversity, and rely more on quality, training, education, invention, innovation and skills rather than on quantity of people.
The costs of population growth are compromising our living standards, locking young people out of housing, and the industry has far too much political power and support. The more we accommodate this socially-engineered population growth, due to unrealistic levels of immigration, the more the Federal government will turn on the immigration tap!
The best athletes are the finely-tuned, well rehearsed and those not carrying too much excess baggage, such as body fat and slack muscles. What's needed for the challenges of the future is a finely-tunes, fit and educated and skilled population, not one that carrying excess "fat"- or an economy that's has population growth un-sustainably built-into it.
There must be a circuit-breaker somewhere, and at least Councils are making headway in democracy.
Australian government climate change denial
The Warsaw climate summit is the first major round of United Nations climate change negotiations since the Abbott government took office. Countries are normally represented by ministers in the second week of major climate meetings. However, our government will not be represented by any senior member.
The United Nations Framework convention on climate change will try to hammer out a new international agreement to limit greenhouse gas emissions. It's unclear if the diplomats attending from Australia will be given a mandate for the meeting, to negotiate.
The Australian climate change ambassador Dr Justin Lee will lead the delegation.
Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott has denied 25 years of climate change research and accused a UN executive secretary of the Framework Convention on Climate Change of "talking through her hat." Environment Minister Mr Hunt said he "looked up what Wikipedia" had written about bushfires and based his statements there. He said it was clear from Wikipedia that Australia's bushfires were "normal and frequent events".
Former prime minister John Howard has poured scorn on the "alarmist" scientific consensus on global warming in a speech to a gathering of British climate skeptics, comparing those calling for action on climate change to religious zealots. No lay person would question peer-reviewed advancements in medical science, paleontology, archeology, zoology, or have the grounds to be highly dismissive and skeptical of new research findings and trends, but when it comes to climate science, it's too abstract, and can be dismissed with impunity as a religious belief without foundation?
No wonder no politician will be at the UN climate change conference. Australia is locked into the economic-model of perpetual growth, and the "business as usual" drive of big population, high volume capitalistic markets, and the cornucopia myth of never-ending benefits for humanity! It's a pseudo-religion, one the defies empirical evidence. The "god" of human advancement, of benevolent Mother Nature, and human advancements technology will "save" humanity from any climatic hostility, scarcities, overpopulation and the planet's degradation, and Australia can continue to grow its population to up to 60 million people by 2050, and enjoy prosperity despite the constraints of climate change!
Speaking their language
Well, I guess this invoce will be a language that VicForestsw will understand.
Support for your efforts to stop the live animal export trade
Dear Andrew
I strongly support your efforts to stop the live animal export trade.
I have just sent an email to Sen Barnaby Joyce in support of your efforts.
Please know that thinking Australians do want this cruel trade to end. The animals have no say in what happens to them and it is up to us to ensure they are treated as live, sentient beings, deserving of respect.
Please continue, in spite of the opposition you find in parliament.
I find it hard to believe that any educated, thinking person could possibly think that sending live animals on long sea trips to slaughter houses in countries where there is no respect for animals, is an OK idea. It is obviously money that is talking. Bribery and corruption tends to be inherent in the countries of destination.
Our society in Australia needs to show the world that we act on our principles and follow through with what we believe, rather than kow-towing to others' beliefs.
Yours sincerely
Helen B Carter
Duck hunting protestors, and loggers, to get more protection
In an another attack on democracy, the Victorian Government has announced a major crackdown on opponents of duck hunting and logging. Our governments are becoming increasingly authoritian, and autocratic.
Protesters in duck shooting areas will have their fines increased to a massive $8500, instead of $1400. It used to be $100 under Labor.
If hunters are "harassed", there could be a fine of $3,500. The new highly protected species isn't the native waterbirds, but their human predators. They are highly valued Liberal voters, obviously!
Duck rescuers are to stay 25 meters from hunters, for their "safety". Wearing bright gear, they are more safe than the hunters in their camouflage clothing.
Similarly, the Government has also created new offences for breaching an exclusion order in logging zones, with similar penalties. Loggers are to be prized species, with higher protection than the native, and threatened, species they are eliminating.
These "crackdowns" are more evidence that democracy and transparency are being eroded as our economic model of perpetual growth means whittling away of natural resources, and those who do it need more and more heavy-handed and draconian protection and support. The new "criminals" are the conservationists and animal activists - those who care about the environment, and native species.
Victorian duck hunt protesters face massive penalty hike
Plan to cut Abbot Point dredging rejected by State Government
A PROPOSAL to reduce the amount of dredging at the controversial $2 billion Abbot Point coal port from 3 million cubic metres to just 500,000 cubic metres has been rejected by the State Government. A departmental briefing to Environment Minister Andrew Powell which was uncovered in a Right to Information search says the port could go ahead with less dredging if the two jetties to be built were extended from 2.8km to 4km.
Courier Mail: Plan to cut Abbot Point dredging rejected by State government
The idea would likely have meant that dredge spoil could have been dumped onshore instead of in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park.
An assessment of the Reef released on Friday blamed agricultural and urban run-off rather than dredging for most damage. Population growth and increased urban run-off, and the "Asian Century", will ensure the threats continue to increase. The heavy dredging will simply put the nails in the coffin of the Great Barrier Reef's integrity.
The briefing warns that dredge spoil material is moving much further and in much greater volumes than previously thought.
If Abbot Point dredging was approved this year, it would enable supporting mine and rail developments to proceed, making coal export possible by 2017.
Governments couldn't consciously be exporting coal if they accepted the science of climate change. "Science" is acceptable if it remains static and abstract, in journals and academic communities. If it impinges on our government's growth plans, and exports, then it becomes controversial and inconvenient - and must be denied!
Kangaroo testicles - a Chinese aphrodisiac?
Ivory and other body parts from African wildlife, and other parts of the world, means animals are being brutally hacked, killed and threatened by poachers. The new trend, to the delight of some graziers who resent the presence of native kangaroos, is that kangaroo testicles are considered an aphrodisiac!
Kangaroo testicles are bound for China as a sex drug branded as a new aphrodisiac. According to popular online shopping websites, China has gone nuts over the tonic which sells for between $30-$150 for a bottle of 100 capsules.
There's no scientific or rational basis for this belief, or no empirical evidence. Australian medical experts warn the drug, based on testosterone, is untested and without scientific data to support its claims of a super-sexed libido.
Like rhino horns that's simply cartilage, like human fingernails, there's no evidence of it being medicinal in value. One label says that "the male kangaroo may mate with 40 female kangaroos and produces twice as much semen as a bull. Essence of Kangaroo is extremely potent as it is rich in natural hormones, proteins, zinc and iron, which are able to increase physical strength and enhance the sexual energy.''
If true, that doesn't mean this potency can be consumed!
The myth that kangaroo breed in "plague" proportions is being propagated, when their joey death rate is very high.
The kangaroo killing commercial industry won't refute the science, or evidence to the contrary, if they are making money from the body parts of kangaroos - our nation's icon!
Kangaroo testicles a hit with Chinese as aphrodisiac
Fears of Great Barrier Reef developments
UNESCO, which oversees the world heritage status of the Great Barrier Reef, has already voiced concern that the port developments might put the area on its ''endangered'' list.
While their report has given some weight to the role dredging and port developments play in the state of the reef, it highlighted more urgent concerns from nutrient run-off, climate change and the crown of thorns starfish.
No port developments should be permitted outside the existing major port areas, it said. Queensland Deputy Premier Jeff Seeney said it was important for decisions about the reef to be based on scientific facts, not "alarmist claims" by environmental groups that can't be verified.
Environmental groups remain concerned about the impact of proposed dredging projects near the reef, including the Abbot Point proposal due for a decision next month.
Environment Minister Mr Hunt said he was encouraged by ''new science'' that could prove more effective in combating the crown-of-thorns starfish infestations that were killing coral. New programs to stop run-off from farms would also make a difference, he said.
His "new science" sounds more like a denial of traditional science, based on observation, empirical evidence and obvious conclusions. This "new science" what our present day politicians are committed to and is the attitude towards climate change!
Crown-of-thorns starfish are responsible for 42 per cent of the coral damage. Storms account for 48 per cent of the degradation and bleaching accounts for the remainder.
The assessment found seagrass meadows had also been affected, hurting populations of dugongs and turtles.
SMH: Fears for reef over port development
If Abbot point goes ahead as planned it will be the largest coal export port on the planet, and if Mackay goes ahead it will be the second biggest port coal on the planet. And the Whitsundays lie in the middle.
The $6.2 billion expansion of the coal port would see four additional coal terminals built; which would provide an extra annual capacity of 120 million tonnes and would support the developments in the Bowen, Surat, and Galilee Basins of Queensland.
Tourists don't want to see destroyed coasts and bygone natural treasures, and marine wildlife will be killed or turned away. This generation shouldn't bear the guilt of having destroyed an world-heritage area, and future generations will be condemning us in retrospect. There's little compatibility between capitalistic economic growth, and long term conservation.
There's no ultimate point of having a thriving and successful coal-mining industry if we lose a world-heritage natural treasure- worth more than any billions from dirty coal extraction and export.
Miranda by-election: Liberals should take warning
The government should take a warning from the recent Miranda electorate by-election, southern Sydney, October 19th. It was a blue-ribbon Liberal electorate, but they proved that the voters can't be taken for granted.
Greens candidate Mr Murray Scott said:
"For too long, state governments have been working hand-in-hand with the big developers, saying the only way to increase Sydney's population is to build Hong Kong-style apartment towers in place of much-loved garden suburbs.
"The government is proposing aggressive new planning laws designed to take powers from local councils, increase state government intervention and [to] weaken environmental planning standards..."
"This is a direct breach of its 2011 pre-election promise to undo Labor's rotten planning changes and return planning powers to local councils."
http://www.theleader.com.au/story/1845253/miranda-voters-head-to-the-pol...
(Pity the Greens don't have a implementable population policy!).
Many people seem to be irritated about Sports and Recreation Minister Graham Annesley. But also, concerns about over-development (Libs on local council raised height restrictions on new developments and changed residential densities).
Labor was running on an over-development platform, with Barry Collier. Collier was a lawyer and former school teacher before entering parliament, and while he never rose from the back bench, he established his local popularity when the government backed down on a plan to build the Southern Freeway through the electorate.
NSW Opposition Leader John Robertson says the swing of about 27 per cent against the Liberals is believed to be the largest ever recorded at a NSW by-election - is a warning to the Liberal government.
The government had to recognise the level of concern about over-development, Sutherland Hospital needs, fire stations closures and TAFE cuts. "The people of Miranda sent a strong message by voting against the cuts to local hospitals, train services and fire stations," Opposition Leader Mr Robertson said.
Andrew Wilkie MP media release: live export
A STATEMENT ON LATEST ANIMAL CRUELTY REVELATIONS
The Independent Member for Denison, Andrew Wilkie, will discuss the latest revelation of cruelty in Australia’s live animal export trade, this time the live sheep trade to Jordan.
WHEN: 12.30pm 31 October
WHERE: Parliament House Lawns Hobart
“I’m beyond asking how many more episodes of animal cruelty are needed before the Australian Government shuts down the live export trade,” Mr Wilkie said.
“The Government simply doesn’t care about the trade being systemically cruel, not being in Australia’s economic self-interest and lacking popular support.
“The latest episode in Jordan shows again the cruelty routinely metered out to Australian livestock sent overseas. It joins a very long list of exposé?s by Animal Australia and others in countries as diverse as Turkey, Israel, Egypt, Pakistan and of course repeatedly in Indonesia.
“In this case the Government must identify the Australian exporter and come down on it like a ton of bricks.
“To allow the trade to continue in the full knowledge that it is systemically cruel makes the Australian Government every bit as guilty as any individual found guilty in Australia of cruelty to animals.
“I remain committed to progress a Private Member’s Bill in the new Parliament to wind up the trade.”
AT least Andrew Wilkie is very concerned about the ongoing animal cruelty and will continue to campaign to end live animal exports. To this end he will be introducing a Private Member’s Bill to the Parliament when it resumes.
Contact form for Senator Banaby Joyce
To Barnaby Joyce
Yesterday I wrote to the Minister for Agriculture, Barnaby Joyce. The electronic copy has been lost but I made the following points to him.
Whilst the government allows the live animal export trade, knowing that the result can well be very inhumane treatment, in fact bloodthirsty sadistic torture the government is a party to the end result. Whilst Mr. Joyce has acknowledged that the treatment is not too good therefore can be assumed not to condone it, it is really even worse if he does not condone it but allows this trade to continue. He is turning a blind eye! The answer to this moral question would have been obvious to me when I was in primary school. I would hope it would still be clear to primary school children but with examples like Mr. Joyce in parliament how long can our ethical standards endure? Mr. Joyce said he cannot police what goes in the rest of the world. That is true, therefore he needs to keep things within is area of control.
The other aspect of the harm inflicted by this industry is the effect on Australians hearing about, knowing and seeing what happens to these animals, knowing that our own government is a party to it and that it is intransigent on the issue. I would consider this to be traumatizing. It traumatizes me every time I hear about it. I cannot watch the footage of suffering animals but I get the picture from reading about it and knowing that there is footage. Maintaining the live animal export industry is doing us all harm as well as the poor animals. It has to be debasing our psyche.
Politicians have blood on their hands
Animals Australia video footage was gathered during the Eid al-Adha, or Festival of Sacrifice, in Jordan in mid October.
It has been sent to the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry and shows sheep being dragged along the ground, thrown into car boots and carved open at the throat.
In one scene, four dying sheep lie twitching in an open street alongside the still body of a fifth. Thousands of sheep have been released outside the ESCAS supply chain system that makes exporters responsible for them up to the point of slaughter.
However, Federal Agriculture Minister Barnaby Joyce has ruled out stopping live exports to Jordan, saying such a move would only end up hurting Australian producers. There's more interest in the financial welfare of producers than the animals!
Prime Minister Tony Abbott has described graphic footage of Australian sheep being brutally slaughtered in Jordan as "disturbing", but he has defended live exports as a "good system."
We must wonder what a "bad system" for animals really would be like? How can it get any worse?
When there's a lack of human rights, there's even more reason animals can be abused. Amnesty International has particular concerns about the application of the death penalty in Jordan because there is a pattern of death sentences, and sometimes executions, occurring as a result of unfair trials where confessions extracted under torture are used as evidence against the defendants. How are animals to be protected in such brutish regimes?
When animals are concerned, industries can't simply brush aside ethics. These callous politicians have blood on their hands, and show how truly shallow their character are when they can over-look brutality and grotesque treatment of sentient animals.
Animals Australia: Take action to ban live export
Oz Gov helps Corporates to put boot in
Well, this is a nice slap-in-the-face for democracy, isn't it? Couldn't be clearer, this message about telling the serfs to just shut up and swallow anything the lords dish out. Thank you Vivienne for bringing this to our attention.
ABC 774 Kelvin Thomson 4.20am talk-back on population
This morning 31st October at 4:20am on ABC Radio with Michael Pavlich, Kelvin Thomson will be doing an extended interview on the issue of global population and Australia’s population growth. The interview will then be followed by talkback callers with questions and discussion for Kelvin. We understand the interview will be broadcast nationally and can also be listened to online. Details are as follows:
- Tune in to your LOCAL ABC Radio frequency (eg in Melbourne 774am) to hear the interview
- Or stream online and follow the prompts at http://www.abc.net.au/overnights/
- Talkback calls will be taken at 1300 800 222
- Send in texts during the interview at 0437 774 774
Although it is early, calling in will help raise the profile of our predicament with overpopulation. When you consider that all day long the ABC and other networks push population growth, it seems very unfair that the one lucid voice putting a counter argument, is to be aired at such an inaccessible hour.
Kelvin Thomson on Melbourne local talkback radio 4.20AM tomorrow
I received the following from Jill Quirk:
Dear SPA member,
You may wish to listen to this program (see below) early tomorrow morning and you can ring in with your own view point.
Sincerely
Jill Quirk
President Sustainable Population Australia , Victoria and Tasmanian branch
Tomorrow morning Thursday 31st October at 420am on ABC Radio with Michael Pavlich, Kelvin Thomson will be doing an extended interview on the issue of global population and Australia’s population growth. The interview will then be followed by talkback callers with questions and discussion for Kelvin. We understand the interview will be broadcast nationally and can also be listened to online. Details are as follows:
— Tune in to your LOCAL ABC Radio frequency (eg in Melbourne 774am) to hear the interview
— Or stream online and follow the prompts at http://www.abc.net.au/overnights/
— Talkback calls will be taken at 1300 800 222
— Send in texts during the interview at 0437 774 774
Look Local First: Keep Labour Market Testing - CFMEU petition
What do the Australian Mining and Minerals Association, the Business Council of Australia, the Master Builders Association and the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry have in common?
They all think that their members, including large multinational companies, shouldn't have to advertise local jobs to Australian workers. They claim that they can’t find "skilled" workers locally. But how do they know if they don't even bother looking? And whatever happened to training workers and putting on apprentices?
We ran a campaign which got the previous Federal Government to pass legislation that made it obligatory for employers to advertise jobs and prove no qualified Australian workers were available, before 457 visa workers can be approved.
But the big end of town is now calling on the new Coalition Government to repeal this legislation, despite the fact that unemployment is rising. There are 714,100 people currently looking for work and our youth unemployment rate is at 12.6 per cent, its highest since 2002.
Despite this, the Minister for Immigration, Scott Morrison has signalled he will consider removing this legal requirement, siding with big business instead of the hundreds of thousands of Australians looking for work.
Join with CFMEU and tell Scott Morrison employers should have to advertise jobs to Australian workers first and get 457 visa workers only if they prove they can’t find a suitable Australian candidate.
Why Mr Abbott should we put you first when you put local workers last?
Petition to reclassify dingoes, and have a National Dingo Plan
This petition is directed to the Federal Government asking to re-classify the dingo in Australia and to have a National Dingo Plan, and to end the cruel management (FIDRMS) now still in place on the Fraser Island dingoes, and to Cease Baiting 1080 and ALL poison baiting ..
This is the biggest campaign we've ever run our target is to gain thousands of signatures from all over Australia and Internationally.
The government is going to see that we must protect this native Australia's only top predator and change the legislation and the laws that stand now on the dingoes of Australia who are not recognised as a native species and are classified as a pest on the same level as a cane toad..
Petition to re classify the Dingo in Australia and to have a national dingo plan
Small crop and banana farmers say turkeys are stripping crops and they want the Government to reduce dingo baiting to allow wildlife balance to be restored. An Australian Banana Growers Council spokeswoman said Sunshine Coast growers had reported substantial damage.
Adelaide Now: Stuff the turkey, dingoes need a break
*Many Indigenous Tribes across Australia hold the Dingo as Sacred Totem. It is apart of the Dreamtime.
*Dingoes are the top land Predator and hold the Ecosystem in balance ref: Wallach and O'Neill.
*Dingoes keep the Fox and Cat in tow along with the Goat and Pig and maintain a balance in the Kangaroo and Rabbit population.
*What does it take for people in this country to get off their behinds and demand this travesty is stopped?
*If it was the Japanese killing Whales there would be thousands marching and chanting big mouthed antics against that nation!
*Wake up Aussies before it is too late'.
*If we lose the dingo then the fox will become the top Australian predator an introduced animal for the settlers to use for fox hunting.
*Why is it so important that we as a nation should voice loud and clear to save our dingoes
*when we do this for animals far away from these shores, yet we condone the extinction of the Dingo an agenda our Government delivers every day in their focus of the extinction of our iconic unique dingo!
*Something must be done as this is a travesty of massive proportion.
Download petition in .doc format
Download petition in .pdf format
English language daily Newscast of Syrian TV
The following is one of 28 English language Daily Newscasts of Syrian TV on the Syria RTV YouTube Channel. Links to other Youtube broadcasts are listed below. The English speaking presenters are composed, calm and show remarkably good humour given the appalling bloodshed suffered by their fellow Syrians these past two and a half years.
Earlier daily Newscasts of Syrian TV
October: 27 26 24 22 21 20 19 15 14 13 12 10 9 6 3 2 1
September: 29 26 24 23 22 21 19 17 16 15 14.
The death toll is estimated at above 100,000 and much of Syria's infrastructure has been destroyed. But, as this broadcast shows, the terrorists have been made to pay for their crimes by the Syrian Army.
But no country can endure indifinitely the trials that have been imposed upon Syria. The governments of countries like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United States and France, who are waging proxy war against Syria using the terrorists must be held to account by their people. On 12 October, PressTV reported that Tunisians protested in defence of the Syrian Government and against their government's support of the terrorists. More should follow the Tunisian protestors' example.
Queensland - easier to "cull" kangaroos for "damage mitigation"
Red-neck drought-ridden Queensland farmers will be able to get "relief" from the "plagues" of kangaroos eating grass. They have received some reprieve with the State Government agreeing to relax regulations around the "culling" of macropods. Landowners will now be able to apply for a damage mitigation permit (DMP) to cull up to 1000 kangaroos, rather than the previous limit of 500 kangaroos.
The Queensland outback will become kangaroo-killing fields, without sympathy or limits.
There is no evidence macropods are doing "damage". It's simply a commercially driven bid to allow cattle to maximise the amount of grass they get.
There will also be no limitation on the number of DMPs that a landholder can submit in a calendar year and applications for DMPs will be processed within seven days of lodgement. It's about streamlining processes, to make killing permits quicker and less justified. Graziers claim they are are losing up to half their carrying capacity to kangaroos in some areas. Native animals are being scape-goated for their numbers, despite their indigenous rights to exist in their own territories.
Farmers are struggling with drought and the impact of kangaroos on country they are trying to spell is devastating. Who are the real culprits? There's the implications of the live export industry, of the promises of wealth and industry by providing red meat for Asia, as part of the Asian Century.
Anthropogenic climate change, exacerbated by hard-hoofed cattle, greenhouse emissions and land clearing, will cause more droughts and lower livestock "carrying capacity".
Kangaroos have no economic or political powers in their favour, and are thus being targeted for "damage mitigation"!
Queensland Country Life: Kangaroo cull breakthrough
Selling public assets & Medibank
The coalition claims that privatized companies are more efficient than public ownership. An historical overview shows that efficiency depends upon the leadership in both public and private businesses. That is the key factor.
Ideology is the main factor driving the coalition – meaning that profit for private interests comes before national interest. Looking at public assets for sale or sold or open for sale, by both coalition and Labor governments, short-term funds for the government that sells off the public assets is their major consideration, regardless of the future golden eggs the geese may produce.
The sale of Medibank Private is against the public interest.
It is a cash cow for the present and future governments.
It is the best way of keeping premiums of all the private medical insurance schemes down, which otherwise can rocket. See the American example, which should frighten us. ‘Regulation’ is open to manipulation for private profit and can be bureaucratic tangles without the publicly owned Medibank Private to set the example.
It does not cost the public anything.
Offices combined with Medicare offices are efficient.
Val Yule
All sales of public assets need to be fought by the public who own them. The examples of past sales should frighten us - e.g Telstra and airport parking,
Wombat hit
I decided about 18 years ago after being a passenger in a car that hit a wombat on a country road at around 11pm that I would henceforth avoid driving in the country at night. It's been a good decision.This accident was practically unavoidable (or should I say inevitable?) as the wombat was not crossing the road but walking on the road in the same direction as our car was travelling. We had just a few minutes beforehand narrowly missed hitting another one.
The last time (only a week or so ago) I took a car trip interstate I saw dead wldlife every few kms. I am never desensitised to this. It always upsets me. Our roads with fast vehicles are like knives slashing through wild life habtat
Wildlife road collisions need educational reporting
How about you do a story that no media wants to do, and instead of using sensational headlines to vilify Australian native wildlife whenever there's a collision from speeding vehicles, you take a good look at the drivers. As Australians we should all be aware of the risks of driving on highways after dark, and drive accordingly. Yet time after time the papers blame our wildlife and often call for yet another useless 'cull'. Culls don't work; they don't stop speeding vehicles from colliding with animals. It's very sad that this time a child was seriously hurt but the kangaroo did not take a dive into the windscreen. I'm sure he or she wanted to live too, and also had a family of his own. The media should start to change tactics; find out and alert the public the exact speed the driver was doing at the time, whether he was driving responsibly with his children in the car at 3.00am, was he distracted in some way, and what his blood alcohol level was when police arrived? We need to get the message through about driving more carefully if we have to drive on country roads after dark. There are devices we can discreetly attach to our vehicles that make a sound to alert animals up ahead. Some only cost around $5 and they are not audible to the human ear. Plus, we need to SLOW DOWN when driving after dark on such roads. Papers never talk about this because it may not be popular. They always talk about the dollar value of damage to vehicles which should be insured anyway; they blame the animals who have been killed or injured and left to slowly die on the side of the roads. Please look at reporting different angles on these incidents and then perhaps people will learn to take more care and lives can be saved; both human and non-human.
Pam.
Stupid 9MSN news vilifies wildlife
In an article with the grossly misleading title of "Kangaroo nearly kills child in Qld,"
10:53am October 27, 2013, 9 MSN reported an accident where a car rammed into a kangaroo as, "A five-year-old child is clinging to life after a kangaroo smashed through a car windscreen west of Brisbane. Police say the roo and the car collided on the Warrego Highway at Kingsthorpe on the Darling Downs about 3am (AEST).
The five-year-old was rushed to Toowoomba Base Hospital with life-threatening injuries.
Another child and two adults in the car were taken to hospital with minor injuries."
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/national/2013/10/27/10/56/kangaroo-nearly-kills-child-in-qld
Reported 12:49 PM by ninemsn news.
Kangaroo smashed through a windscreen? The car was "smashing" not the kangaroo!
The mainstream media always vilify the animals, rather than human-caused car crashes.
Then, the "kangaroo nearly kills the child", lifting their status to almost child "murderers."
And, quickly, people start to think it is okay to get rid of them, rather than to drive carefully within their habitat.
State roadbuilding authorities resist building wildlife bridges and tunnels in Australia, making this country one of the worst for wildlife fatalities. If the driver wasn't going too fast, perhaps the driver should sue the road authority for failure to allow for passage of kangaroos in the area.
The extent of callousness in this report is breathtaking, and contributes to the extremely low standard of the report, which tells people nothing useful, but creates a destructive fiction. How can Australians publish something like this?
Net energy analysis controversy
Net-energy analysis became a public controversy in 1974 when two stories made the news. In the first, Business Week reported that Howard Odum had developed a "New Math for Figuring Energy Costs." Among other results, this new math indicated that stripper oil well operations were energy sinks rather than energy sources. According to this analysis, these operations could be profitable only when cheap, regulated oil was used to produce deregulated oil. The other net-energy story of 1974 was the study of Chapman and Mortimer asserting that a rapidly growing nuclear program would lead to an increased use of oil rather than to the desired substitution (see Net-Energy Analysis by Daniel T. Spreng, Oak Ridge Assoc. Univ. & Praeger, 1988).
Nothing but spin and lies
What else could we expect from Matthew Guy except spin - a euphemism for political lies! Our State is losing industries, and revenues, and the quick way of keeping up cash flows is through property development - and pretending that our growth is "natural" and that they can't do anything about it! While 40% of our population growth might be "natural", or through births over deaths, that number would also be influenced by immigration.
Australia's human "carrying capacity" is being reduced by climate change, and evidenced by bushfires.
The CFA predict more and more fires, and challenges in Victoria. The state and federal governments have largely dismissed the link between climate change and bushfires. But the strategy to prepare the authority for challenges likely to arise after 2025 concluded there was ''no doubt'' the atmosphere was warming.
A 2003 CSIRO report predicts that by 2050 the maximum snow depth could decrease by up to 80 centimetres and the ski season might shorten by more than two months. This will impact on revenue on the $1.8 b tourism industry, but also our water catchments. 'The worst scenario is in 2020 the reduction is 30-40 per cent for the higher sites and by 2050 it's 70-80 per cent.
Environment Victoria report that for Melbourne, the number of days over 35°C is set to rise from the long-term average of 10 to anywhere from 15-26 by 2070. This poses a serious threat to children, the elderly and people with existing conditions – heat-related deaths are projected to increase by 40% by 2050. Infrastructure is also strained by extreme heat and the risk of bushfires is also increased. (Environment Victoria don't have a population policy)
Sea-level rise and extreme events such as bushfires put Australians’ property – and lives – at risk in the future. Rising sea levels threaten to drown or put at risk billions of dollars-worth of private and public property before the end of the century.
As climate change progresses, an increase in extreme weather events, property damage caused by rising sea-levels, and strain on public infrastructure will cost Victoria dearly. According to the Victorian Managed Insurance Authority, the Victorian government faces significantly higher insurance costs and liabilities for government-owned assets including schools, hospitals, roads, rail and bridges. In addition to the increased insurance costs, the government faces growing exposure to personal and professional liability claims from more severe climatic events.
EV: Australia at risk
There's a clear incongruence of policies and practice in government circles. The age of growth is certainly over. Why add to the risks, and exacerbate existing problems? More people crammed into our cities will add to the cycle of greenhouse gas emissions, especially from the use of air conditioners and electrical appliances. It's like a farmer, knowing a severe drought is coming, deliberately adding more livestock to the pasture, knowing their doomed future! Or, it's like the captain of a ship known to be not sea-worthy, deliberately cashing in on willing and ignorant passengers.
Recklessness, and a tightening up of democratic transparency, at a time when we should expect adherence to the principle of cation, is deliberate denial of reality and will impact on the well-being and even lives of many people in the future.
EIA inflates shale gas gains denies problems
Within the last couple of years ASPO-USA colleagues and I have communicated with and met with top EIA and DOE officials who constantly lied to us about what they knew and what they didn't know. The New York Times obtained internal emails showing EIA technical experts knew about serious oil & gas constraints while EIA top managment was spouting the Cornucopian concensus.
Some relevant articles on this:
Shale gas won't stop peak oil, but could create an economic crisis
Overinflated industry claims could topple optimistic growth forecasts within just five years
Dr Nafeez Ahmed, June 21, 2013
Victorian planning minister - population stability ridiculous
Thanks Geoff for drawing attention to Guy's comments. My responses:
1. It is obvious that town planning has failed us in the past. It is just too difficult.
2. Even if the percentage growth rates are down, it is the absolute growth that is relevant because of supply constraints, especially the availability of land - and infrastructure provision due to time lags and costs.
The "spirit of co-operation" would certainly apply to the property industry and some other industries and professions with a vested interest in growth.
" . . . without a great deal of fuss" - does Mathew live in a cocoon?
3. A nonsensical argument.
4. In other words, a continuing shambles.
Excellent, Accurate article
Very good job presenting accurate, important information. The very fact that the EIA researches net energy, but refuses to publicly release any results, is quite telling. Perhaps they know what other energy researchers know, that net energy is declining for all fossil energy sources, but will not say this publicly due to political and market concerns.
Thank you for publishing this accurate report. Your conclusions are the result of rigorous investigation.
Moreton bay under threat
Moreton Bay's waterways will die within 20 years if more isn't done to protect the health of the bay, from a sea grass to an algae environment, a leading Australian water scientist has warned.
Mud is flowing downstream from the Lockyer Valley, and from constructions sites around Brisbane into Moreton Bay. Moreton Bay is home to the largest population of dugongs but more than 80 per cent of Moreton Bay's seagrass beds were lost in some areas after sediment flowed into the bay in 2011.
The 2011 Brisbane floods brought thousands of tonnes of silt, which settled in Moreton Bay, and that silt is laced with all the pollutants of agricultural and urban development. The Lockyer Valley is rated among the top ten most fertile farming areas in the world. The area is under heavy urban pressure for housing developments.
Cyclones and floods are part of the climatic landscape, but human impacts have a multiplying effect on disturbances to soils, on the amount of concrete and hard surfaces, and output of pollutants washed into the waterways. By 2031 the region’s population is estimated to grow to over 585,000 from around 390,000 new, and be the third largest growth area after Brisbane and the Gold Coast. "Some" innovative developers controlling erosion is inadequate!
Urban planning needs to consider deadly environmental impacts, and planners need to include the word "no" into their vocabulary where it's inappropriate.
SMH:We are killing Moreton Bay
Victorian 'Planning' Minister: population stability 'ridiculous'
Try to follow the logic in Matthew Guy's argument.
From Cutting migration ridiculous: Guy in the Melbourne Age of 21 Oct 2013 :
- Debate about overseas migration and population growth is ridiculous because Victoria has embraced faster growth in the past, Planning Minister Matthew Guy said.
- ''This country was growing faster on a percentage basis, Victoria was growing much faster on a percentage basis, in the 1950s and '60s … it was managed in a spirit of co-operation and as a positive challenge and one that this country and in particular the state of Victoria accommodated without a great deal of fuss,'' [Matthew Guy] said.
- ''If we ended all overseas migration tomorrow, Melbourne would still add the population of Adelaide [1.2 million people] through natural increase in that period alone,'' Mr Guy told a Property Council of Australia growth summit in Melbourne.
- [Matthew Guy] said ''the issue of managing population increase with services and infrastructure and planning'' would be ongoing.
Given the gridlocked peak hour traffic and lack of public transport and other services to many new belts of Melbourne's urban sprawl, I would have thought it self-evident that neither Matthew Guy's Government nor any previous Victorian state government had managed "infrastructure and planning." So why should we expect any better from him from now on?
Video of Syrian victims of 2.5 tonne car-bomb in Hama
Below is an embedded 2 minute, 48 second Russian-language broadcast with English sub-titles. Be warned : Some of the images are truly shocking and not suitable for viewing by under-age viewers.
On 21 October 2013 Australia's SBS News misreported that "it's thought that most of those killed were government troops." (emphasis aded)
Al-Jazeera, which is infamous for having mis-reported the Syrian conflict, persists in using quotation marks, as if it still considers the perpetrators of these crimes to be freedom fighters and not terrorist mass murderers. An example is the illustration in the story, Dozens killed in Syria suicide bombing of 21 October 2013. The caption underneath the the included image of the devastation, reads:
'Syrian state media blamed the attack on "terrorists" [SANA/Reuters] '
Help for wildlife in NSW - from Maryland Wilson
Dear friends throughout NSW
Injured and distressed animals that have survived the bushfires in the Blue Mountains are emerging from affected areas and seeking refuge. Greg Keightly, branch disaster coordinator of the volunteer organisation Wildlife Information, Rescue and Education Services (WIRES) in the Blue Mountains, said the animals included ringtail possums, sugar gliders, birds, swamp wallabies, echidnas, lizards and wallaroos.
Mr Keightly said during previous bushfire disasters, animals had taken weeks to emerge, but the current conditions coupled with the destruction of urban areas meant that on this occasion injured animals had been seeking refuge immediately. He said the animals were distressed, had been badly affected by smoke and that many were suffering from burned paws and fused claws which had been melted by heat.
Mr Keightly said concerned people could make water available for animals in need, but stressed that shallow dishes of water should be used as deep vessels could lead to drownings.
He also reminded people to be aware of the risk that domestic animals posed to wildlife and urged them to keep dogs inside at night.
WIRES advises people to keep a cardboard box and towel in the boot of their car in case they encounter injured wildlife. It recommends that burned animals can be wrapped loosely, placed in a box, kept in a dark, quiet and warm place and offered water but not food.
Mr Keightly advised members of the public to immediately call the 24-hour local WIRES hotline on (02) 4754 2946 or 1300 094 737 if they needed to report a rescue.
He said the organisation ensures animals are cared for until their local habitat regenerates and they can be safely released back into familiar territory.
WIRES has established a Bushfire Appeal Fund to help injured, homeless, orphaned and disoriented animals.
ABC news: Animal victims of the Blue Mountain bushfires seek refuge
NSW Bushfire Emergency Appeal WIRES
24 October 2013. Please add further miscellaneous comments to Miscellaneous comments from 24 October 2013. - Ed
Shark nets in Australia killing Pacific sea life
A baby whale has died after becoming entangled in shark nets off Sydney's northern beaches. Specialist crews were sent in to free it but found the body of the calf this morning at Mona Vale.
Daily Telegraph:baby whale died after being entangled in a shark net
Shona Lonigan of marine rescue group ORRCA says the baby's 45-tonne mother and other whales are nearby. The calf's mother and four other adult whales remain in the vicinity.
The calf's mother and four other adult whales remain in the vicinity.
The baby humpback is understood to have become entangled in the net in the early hours of the morning and was spotted from the shore about 6am.
After authorities were contacted, staff from the National Parks and Wildlife and from ORRCA rushed to the scene to try to disentangle the calf.
ORRCA volunteer Shona Lorigan estimated that the calf was no older than three months, and about 6-7m long.
She estimated its mother's weight to be about 45t.
The baby humpback is understood to have become entangled in the net in the early hours of the morning and was spotted from the shore about 6am.
The calf was travelling with its mother on its southern migration to the Antarctic.
In Australia, the end of Spring means time at the beach and that also means shark nets get deployed at some of the nation's most popular swimming spots.
But the Humane Society International wants these nets removed because it says the nets catch and kill animals that are vital for the ecology and economy of the Pacific region.
These animals include endangered turtles, dugongs and whales.
ABC Radio Australia Shark nets in Australia killing Pacific sea life (Credit: ABC)
The territory of marine animals is the oceans, and humans are terrestrial. The barriers to animal movement must be removed. Sharks are becoming extinct. There must be other ways of protecting swimmers, and it can't become a lethal recreation.
ForceChange Petition- Urge Australia to ban shark nets
Online form to email Greg Hunt, Federal Environment Minister
KIng's anthropocentric world-view is evidence of denial
Bushfires are raging in NSW, yet Premier Barry O'Farrell is denying climate change, and the obvious connection with extreme weather events. Deep cuts in their budget has cut funding to investigating and preparation for climate change. Tony Abbott will cut the carbon tax and has closed the Climate commission. The same with human population growth, that's outstripping ecological and economic limits and headlong into overshoot!
Malcolm King is burying his head in denial.
His attack on SPA reveals ignorance, even to not having ever read their newsletters or web page! His "anti immigration" and anti "population" attacks lack substance and are complete diatribe. SPA is an environmental organization, matching human demands to ensure we don't suffer the consequence of overshoot. Many scientists conclude with SPA. King has a very callous and hardened anthropocentric world-view. It's as if the planet was an economic resource to plunder and conquer for human benefits, with no limits to exploitation.
If there aren't enough trams, its because the heavy demand of population growth doesn't bring in enough revenue to build more! If there aren't enough jobs, the unemployment rate will be exacerbated by high competition from migrants. No one except cornucopia believers imagine that our economy is endless.
Australia has the highest rate of mammal extinctions of the modern world, and many native species are struggling to cope with human settlements on our coasts, where species such as koalas were once abundant.
The cornucopia myth is a superstitious belief in never-ending benefits for humans. It's a mystical adherence that the planet Earth is a receptacle that will keep increasing outputs and size to fit human demands of endless population growth!
'Selfish' describes developer lobby vs democracy (NIMBYs)
I am glad you pointed out this incredibly hypocritical use of the word 'selfish', Nimby.
The developers are like a bunch of cotton producers complaining that slaves selfishly want their freedom.
Kelvin Thomson says “State of the States” Misleading and Shallow
On his blog at http://kelvinthomson.blogspot.com.au/2013/10/state-of-states-misleading-and-shallow.html Kelvin Thomson (MP Wills, Victoria - who got the most votes of any ALP member this Fed election) writes, in response to a widely reported ComSec report:
"We often talk about the numerous shortcomings of GDP as a performance indicator, and yet it continues to dominate our airwaves.
Today the ABC and other media outlets are uncritically reporting a “State of the States” report by CommSec, which purports to rank the performance of the States. The ranking system rewards economic and population growth. As far as I can tell it does not include in its ranking criteria things like protection of habitat, how endangered species are faring, the gap between rich and poor, quality of education, quality of health services, and numerous other important indicators.
I can’t see any reference to traffic congestion, housing affordability, or the cost of living pressures on older people arising from population growth. It is a pity such reports, which are shallow and misleading, receive such uncritical media acceptance."
You can read the report here: http://www.investing.commsec.com.au/stateofstates ComSec uses eight indicators: "eight key indicators: economic growth; retail spending; equipment investment; unemployment, construction work done; population growth; housing finance and dwelling commencements." All these indicators are negatives for our living environment, upon which we all depend for life, however "housing finance and dwelling commencements" are, for most people, symptoms of rising costs and homelessness, and "construction work, population growth" are inflicting costs on the wider public which they have no control over and would not choose. ComSec, however, takes as a positive that some elite grubs are profiting from the distress of the rest of us. ComSec would argue that all this is making money and that it must 'trickle down' eventually, so we should all rejoice. Of course we cannot live on trickles and would rather fair distribution and less tumult.
No "plan" can fix poor planning that assumes unlimited growth
Some planners claim that the inner suburbs are in "selfish" lockdown, which means that developers have to scrimmage for whatever they can get! If planning wasn't so controversial, growth-based, corrupted by closed-door agreements and streamlined to obstruct democratic debate, then it wouldn't be so difficult to get public approval.
It's not "selfish" of residents to want to maintain their suburb's well-being against the greed and proliferation of property developers imposing their high-density plans on our communities. What's causing urban sprawl is not these "selfish" residents, but our socially-engineered 2% population growth! Any vacant land is being hemmed in by our city's rampant growth.
Any land, that should be preserved for schools, golf courses, railway tracks, industries and parks, is under considerable population pressure.
If our city was being renewed, with consideration for amenities, heritage values, open spaces, and the conservation of infrastructure and living standards, then planning in Melbourne wouldn't be the charade, the farce that it is.
The future holds many local and global challenges. The IPCC warn of high weather extremes and devastation to agriculture. Already prices for water and energy are excessive and so are house prices. This "growth" being forced onto future generations is based purely on greed and profits, and will condemn them to all the "challenges" of the future, exacerbated by massive overcrowding. No amount of "planning" can alleviate the dystopia these numbers will create.
There's a dis-connect in thinking coming from the halls of power, and it's completely illogical and incoherent with present day projections of food security, the explosion of human numbers, scarcity of fresh water, mega-billion dollar infrastructure demands, increasing poverty, and costs of living. How many more desalinations does this plan assume the public will pay for - just for the basic privilege of fresh water?
Politicians are in the pocket and power of property developers and big corporations, and continue to support population growth. By the time cracks and flaws are showing our economy, and city's overgrowth, these politicians are have gone, and there mistakes are passed onto to the next government - who in turn think they can "fix" the problem with a new urban development plan, and more growth!
Urban planning has lost any professional status. Most professions and disciplines acknowledge limits, constraints and boundaries of scope, but high benchmarks and professional standards of planning standards are being compromised by forced high population growth - and must thus end up being abrasively contradictory towards community movements to protect their living standards and communities.
Already there are grim prospects for the future, all made worse by the politics of greed being forced unto us by politicians colluding with property developers and the powerful elite who will benefit from this growth.
2009 video of care for koala rescued from bushfire, ...
Wildlife carers could also consider recording their rescue efforts on video and publishing them on Youtube. A search for "care for injured australian wildlife" (quotes omitted) gave me the following broadcasts amongst others:
Australian bushfire koala victim: Mystery Girl - 2009
Baby Brushtail feeding
Dophin massacres in Peru to bait endangered sharks!
Many are keenly aware of the dreadful killing of dolphins at Taiji, Japan and assume that is the largest slaughter of dolphins in the world; far from it. In fact, the killing of dolphins for food, called dolphin bush meat, is a worldwide problem and may be growing as traditional fisheries collapse.
10,000 gentle, intelligent and harmless dolphins a year are being speared and slaughtered by Peruvian fishermen- just for bait to catch endangered sharks
• Fishermen in Peru hunt and butcher dolphins, even though it's illegal
• They harvest meat from the animals to use as cheap bait for sharks
• Jim Wickens negotiated passage on a fishing ship to see it for himself
• He and his cameraman witnessed the brutal process from start to finish
As the harpoon sliced through the dolphin’s flesh, a cry of excitement went up from the crew as they celebrated their catch. Fifty yards away, the dolphin’s beak broke the surface as it struggled to escape the line, slowly tiring as it became enveloped in a thick cloud of its own blood. Two crewmen dragged the rope in, the dolphin still desperately thrashing, but there was to be no miracle escape.
A crew member sharpened a knife and casually began to slice off the fins, tossing them into the sea.
As the thick puddle of bright red blood widened, he began to peel the skin off its back. The hunt was over, the dolphin dead, the fishermen had their bait.
In marine conservation terms, that’s a double catastrophe, with dolphins — many species of which are protected — being killed to catch sharks, many species of which are now endangered.
The Peruvian fishermen call dolphins ‘sea-pigs’. It’s a term that does no justice to their elegant movement through the water but, from the fishermen’s point of view, is perhaps a not unreasonable description of an animal that supplies meat that seems tailor-made for shark fishing.
The meat of the sharks is sold to dealers waiting at the harbour and is destined for dinner plates across the world. The shark fins are sent to the Far East for soup.
Dolphins killed as bait to catch endangered sharks in Peru
Killing dolphins is illegal in Peru but the laws are difficult to enforce on the high seas. However, dolphin meat is sold in markets on shore and could be controlled at that point, if police were willing to do so.
No living creature is safe from human exploitation or violence.
Although it is not well publicised in global media, there are many shark species heading towards extinction. Without international protection, some will disappear in our lifetimes if destructive fishing methods persist and current population trends continue.
The practice of shark "finning," or slicing off a shark's fins and throwing it back to die slowly on the ocean floor from starvation or inability to move, has exploded worldwide due to demand from China, where shark fin soup is considered a delicacy.
Stop Slaughtering and Poisoning dolphins in Peru: PLEASE SIGN
OR
Send an email to the Ambassador of Peru in Canberra:
[email protected]
This animal died too
I tried to help Evelyn find somewhere to take the ring tail possum.The local vet which she thought was open 24 hours was closed. I rang the Lort Smith Animal hospital in North Melbourne who were open and said they would take the possum. They said that if there were any visible injuries that the possum would be put down as possums "do not respond well to antibiotics". They gave me 2 other choices north of the city in Collingwood and Kensington but Evelyn said they were all too far for her. I then drove to meet Evelyn intending to take the possum to a vet. I contacted her by phone on the way to get more directions. During this phone call l I learned that the possum had died. Just one more clash with burgeoning humanity and our wild life!
Albert Park Victoria: Possum attacked by dog and human today
Today a candobetter.net editor received a call from Evelyn, a person who was picniking in St Vincents Garden, Albert Park. She saw a dog off-leash attack a possum, then the human accompanying the owner throwing the possum about. I left a message about the location and nature of the problem on Wildlife Victoria's site (after waiting about 10 minutes on their phone). Animal Lib had initially said that they did domestic animals, but later phoned back, unasked, to say they would send someone out if the girl wished and were given her contact number. They said to count them in in future for this kind of problem. In the mean time Evelyn had found a towel and wrapped the possum and was going to take it to a local vet. it was a ringtail, by her description. A person who had done a possum care course in the area was also contacted and said they would ring Evelyn.
After that I looked at the above page and realised that people were ringing here first because our number was at the top. So I have placed that number at the base of the page and improved the display of more directly relevant resources for finding rescuers.
The Hon. Kelvin Thomson MP - Speech at the Fenner Conference
The Hon Kelvin Thomson MP
Fenner Conference for 2013
Australian Academy of Science
11 October 2013
Last Saturday night I went to my School Reunion for the class of 1972 and 1 973. Forty years on. I’ve spent 25 of them as a State and Federal MP – some of my schoolmates thought this a senseless waste of human life! But I was more interested in their lives. One had dropped out of University after a couple of terms and within 48 hours walked into a job as a trainee Medical Scientist, around which he’s built a lifetime career. One girl never completed Year 12, and when she dropped out of school her mum took her to a local hospital and straight away got her a job as a nurse. She is still nursing. Others went into business and are now semi-retired or fully retired. One said to me, I was so lucky to be born when I was. If I’d come along today, I’d just be a bum. Well I don’t know about that bit, but he’s certainly right about being born in the 1950s. Because the opportunities that my generation had – job and career opportunities, housing opportunity, free education – our children don’t have them. For all the hype about growth and progress and development building a better world, it isn’t. It is way tougher for our kids than it ever was for us.
This is not just true for Australia, it is true in many other countries as well. It is heartbreaking to hear those stories of all the African migrants who drowned off the coast of the Mediterranean island of Lampedusa, Terrible, terrible, terrible. There is a response that says we should tackle this problem by dismantling our borders and allowing people to live wherever they want to live. But anyone who has seen the ‘Gumballs’ video by Roy Beck, of Numbers USA, – and if you haven’t, I can’t recommend it too highly – will know that there are 2 billion people in the world living on $2 per day or less, and that their numbers are increasing by 80 million every year.
No nation in the world – not the United States, not Europe, not Australia – can cope with ! such numbers.
There are two causes of mass migration. One is people fleeing political violence and repression. The other driver is poverty and people wanting a better life.
In those countries which are beset by political violence, the most common cause is religious fundamentalism. There is religious violence, oppression of minorities, not enough respect for the rights of women, and not enough separation between religion and politics, between Church and State. This needs to be called out. It is a task for all of us – from whatever religious or ethnic background we come – to condemn, to denounce, to shun, to treat as outcasts religious leaders who preach hate and violence. It has to be called for what it is. Until political and religious violence stops, there will be people fleeing it.
And in the other motive for getting on board a boat – the search for a better life – again we all have a role to play. ! We heard yesterday that each new arrival in Australia creates an infrastructure cost of $341,000, which would go a long way towards lifting an entire African village out of poverty.
We should lift our foreign aid budget to 0.7% of GDP. We should not cut our aid by $4.5 billion over the forward estimates as the Liberal Government is doing. It is claimed there is a budget emergency and we can’t afford this aid. Then why is the defence budget to be increased. The Government target of 2% of GDP is quite arbitrary and absolute nonsense. Spending money on aid builds goodwill with our neighbours and makes us more secure – I’ve seen it with my own eyes – people in Indonesian villages like us. In stark contrast spending money on more powerful weapons just makes our neighbours suspicious and sets in place a vicious circle of arms race, fear and mistrust.
The question I have heard at this conference is, why don’t we win? Why is
Australia’s population not only still increasing, but increasing by more than it used to. Why has Australia’s net migration rocketed up from 80,000 in the mid-1990s to over 200,000 nowadays? After all, all the opinion polls regularly show that between 2/3rds and 70% of Australians don’t support the high population, high migration path we’re on.
It is worthy of note that no Australian political leader has ever gone to an election promising to increase the migration intake. The Whitlam government reduced immigration to just over 50,000. In more recent times migration increased substantially, during the final Howard years, and again under Kevin Rudd, who declared himself a fan of a Big Australia and achieved no electoral success after that. Julia Gillard declared herself an opponent of Big Australia but the migration rate and population growth continued largely unchanged.
So why don’t we win? A central reason is that there is virtually no public debate about it. It is given no oxygen – snuffed out. Why is it so? After considerable reflection, I have come to the conclusion that population is not unique in this regard.
It is one of a number of issues, not the only one, but one of a number of issues, which are considered threatening to the economic interests of the wealthiest and most powerful Australians (and in some cases non-Australians) who exercise great influence on our political debate through their direct and indirect media influence.
There are political issues which contain no germ of threat to corporate wealth – same sex marriage, asylum seekers, the Republic, politicians’ entitlements. These occupy endless column inches and airtime. If they distract and divide us, so much the better.
But issues which have the potential to impact on the wealth of the wealthy – executive salaries, trade practices and market concentration, foreign ownership, threats to the environment from industry and agriculture, and ye! s, population growth and migration – these issues are constantly overlooked and repressed.
So one of the key reasons we lose is that we cannot get going or sustain a public debate about this issue. In this we don’t get any help from quite a few people who think of themselves as progressive, and who would look you in the eye and swear black and blue that they want to save the environment, they want to protect workers, that they care about the future. But whether it is from fear of being called racist or xenophobic, or a form of moral conceit or vanity, they will not touch the issue of population.
That is of course their right, but let me make this point to such people as bluntly as I can. For as long as Australia’s rapid population growth, high migration path endures, it will destroy the things you claim to hold dear. It creates a surplus pool of labour, which is used as a battering ram against job security, an! d against workers’ pay and conditions. It prevents us attaining full employment, and the quest for jobs, jobs, jobs for our increasing workforce leads us to sacrifice our environmental standards, destroy wildlife habitat, and compromise our quality and way of life. It undermines what you say you are trying to achieve, and assures victory to your political opponents.
And I think honourable defeat is overrated. In my view there is little honour in avoidable failure. In my view those who want to save the environment, who want to help workers, who care about the future, have a responsibility to succeed. Honour comes from success, from solving problems, from being able to proudly hand the baton over to the next generation.
So what am I going to do about it? I won’t be contesting the Shadow Ministry election on Monday. I was a Shadow Minister for 10 years during the Howard years; I have been there and done that. But I am certainly not looking for the quiet life and to slip quiet! ly out the back door.
It is precisely in order to focus on the things that really matter that I have taken the steps I have. I will devote myself in this Parliament to doing everything I can to get the neglected issues, like population, considered.
I admit that to date I haven’t been all that successful with my efforts. Elements of my 2009 14 Point Plan have been adopted – the Baby Bonus is gone, the Labor Government lifted the refugee intake to 20,000 – so I will at some point re-write the Plan. But I look at our population growth statistics and projections, and I look at our vanishing birds and plants and animals, and feel that I have been essentially unsuccessful.
So I am going to set up an NGO – an Incorporated Association – to pursue the cause. It will have a token membership fee and will not be a competitor organisation for Sustainable Population Australia or the environment NGOs. It will! not be a political party; I’m in one of those already! It won’t be a single-issue group – I don’t think politicians feel under much pressure from those.
It won’t try to have a policy on everything, and it will try to avoid the divide and distract traps I talked about earlier. But it will set out a coherent, superior, alternative to the path we are on. I am going to launch it soon. It will be limited to Victoria, which will disappoint some of you, but you’ve got to start somewhere. I may be able to work up Associate Membership for interstaters.
The great nineteenth-century philosopher John Stuart Mill said, “Solitude, in the sense of being often alone, is essential to any depth of meditation or of character, and solitude in the presence of natural beauty and grandeur, is the cradle of thoughts and aspirations which are not only good for the individual, but which society could ill do without. Nor is there much satisfaction in contemplating the world with! nothing left to the spontaneous activity of nature…. every hedgerow or superfluous tree rooted out, and scarcely a place left where a wild shrub or flower could grow without being eradicated as a weed in the name of improved agriculture”.
I hope many of you will join my NGO. I hope you will help me build it into a large movement of citizens dedicated to passing on to our children and our grandchildren a world is as good a condition as the one our parents and grandparents gave to us.
“Very Generous Immigration Program” Pushing Out Would Be Home B
Source: Kelvin Thomson, MP. Wills electorate: http://kelvinthomson.blogspot.com.au/2013/10/very-generous-immigration-program.html
Australia used to be the country where everyone could afford to have a home of their own. But for far too many of today’s young Australians, that is no longer true. Housing affordability has declined.
Treasurer Joe Hockey confirmed yesterday in New York in an interview with CNBC that our large migration program is one of the key drivers of housing unaffordability for young people.
He told CNBC that “Australia is a long way from a housing bubble….The fact is we have a very generous immigration program and we have very slow supply coming in the market”.
Mr Hockey is correct that the high migration program is a driver of rising house prices in Australia. Where I differ from Mr Hockey is that I don’t believe rising house prices is a good thing. The fact is that housing is a necessity, like food, water, electricity and petrol. No-one cheers when the price of food, water, electricity and petrol goes up – why should we cheer when the price of a house goes up?
That cheering drowns out the quiet sad shrug of a generation being locked out of the opportunities which my generation and the one before me had the good fortune to have.
You may also comment on this on Kelvin Thomson's blog here: http://kelvinthomson.blogspot.com.au/2013/10/very-generous-immigration-program.html
Drinking recycled effluent 'inevitable' in smarter Australia?
The Drinking Water Through Recycling report by Dr Stuart Khan from the University of NSW found recycling effluent is "technically feasible and can safely supply potable water directly into the water distribution system".
"I can't imagine a direct potable reuse scheme in Australia in anything less than a decade, perhaps 20 years, perhaps 30 years is more likely," Dr Khan said.
Dr Khan said recycled water was already entering water storages. "There are many examples around Australia where we have waste water treatment plants that are discharging into rivers that run into reservoirs that become part of the drinking water supply," he said. Rather than "shortages" of water, it should be a "long-age" of human numbers!
"I see that if we are going to have increasing population pressures, potentially increasing climate pressures in many areas, we really do need get a lot smarter about this one-directional use of water," he said.
The Age: drinking recycled effluent inevitable in a smarter Australia
Rather than "smart", this is an acknowledgement of human population overshoot! Nature can recycle water, naturally and efficiently through climatic systems. How can humans emulate this process safely?
In some river systems, towns upstream discharge their treated sewage into the river and towns further downstream draw water from the same river. For example, people living in towns that draw water from the Murrumbidgee below Canberra, and then down the Murray to Adelaide, are already partly using reuse water.
potential health risks:
Microbial pathogens in wastewater from sewage effluent are the major concern for human health when recycling water. The major groups of pathogens are:
Bacteria (e.g. Escherichia coli, Salmonella spp)
Viruses (e.g. Enteroviruses, Rotavirus, Hepatitis A)
Protozoa (e.g. Giardia Lamblia, Cryptosporidium parvum)
Helminths (e.g. Taenia spp (Tapeworm), Ancylostoma spp (Hookworm))
Australia to be hit hard by climate change
The unreleased draft of the IPCC's second report also warns that $226 billion worth of coastal assets including homes, rail and road infrastructure are at risk with just a 1.1m rise in sea levels. More people will die from extreme heat, and another 800,000 people will fall ill year from contaminated food and water - while more than 270,000 homes will be at risk of collapsing into the ocean from rising sea levels.
The report warns very high and extreme fire danger days will increase by up to 30 per cent by 2020 - and up to 100 per cent by 2050.
Australia, though smaller in population than China, has a land mass comparable to China and its population is concentrated along coastlines – “sea level rises pose a hazardous impact to cities such as Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane,” says Dr Qin Dahe, a glaciologist and respected Chinese academician.
SMH: Australia has much to lose from climate change
Climate change could disrupt farming. And the frequency of bushfires is indirectly linked to climate change. Plans for being the "food bowl" of Asia could be in disarray!
Newly "elected" Labor leader Bill Shorten says that: "My priorities during the [leadership] campaign is for Labor to reinforce a vision for Australia writ large. We recognise, for instance, that to write Australia large, [we’ve] got to be pro-immigration. We’ve got to be pro our regions; Australia is more than just three cities on the east coast". Surely he doesn't suggest that we have more cities on our east coast, loaded by up more imported migrants?
Shorten also says that "The greatest resource we have in Australia is not the minerals beneath the ground, it is in the minds and capacities of Australians. We need to get behind our scientific and research community". We should be investing in science, education and research and that should also mean climate science!
BRW: Immigration, science and Roman history: Q&A with new federal Labor leader Bill Shorten
Contradictorily, he says "We need to be the party of science, research, and higher education".
If Australia is going to be hit hard by climate change, it's illogical and backward thinking to be importing more people! There seems to be a large chasm of disconnect between science, empirical evidence and the grandiose ideas of politicians, completely divorced from reality.
Labor must cast off the yoke of economic neoliberalism
Sooner or later, if the Labor Party is to become a real alternative to the ruling Abbott government, it will have to confront the economic dogma of neoliberalism that was suddenly adopted in 1983, with no prior warning, and no electoral mandate by the Hawke/Keating Government.
When it does, it will have to set about to re-establish the public ownership of the enterprises that were privatised by 'Labor' and Liberal/National Coalition governments in recent decades -- Telstra, power utilities, railways, public transport, roads, housing, ports, etc, etc.
Matthew Guy is not a town planner
Matthew Guy has a BA, from Latrobe University. He is not a professional town planner, only the Minister for Planning in the Victorian government. He was the shadow Minister of Planning from 2006 to December 2010. His understanding of planning is shallow, self serving and monetary in nature - to serve the well-being of property developers and business investors. True and professional planning principles are being dismissed and over-ridden, and in reality are much more profound and multi-disciplinary than accommodating population growth by streamlining building permits, and overlaying Melbourne with high rise towers and high density living!
Planning must take into consideration energy sources, environmental aspects such as sunlight, shadows, weather patterns, and amenities, quality, costs, public expectations, open parklands, natural resources, access, long-term issues and sustainability. Matthew Guy's agenda is about actively encouraging rampant population growth, even against the wishes and well-being of the public. He's taking away democratic rights of citizens, so they can't obstruct developments - which includes rational debate and logical consequences of all the developments threatening to destroy Melbourne's livability.
Any profession must take into consideration scope, constraints, and limitations. For Matthew Guy, there aren't any - they are simply dismissed! Planning is synonymous with GROWTH, GROWTH!
His idea of planning is to create zones, of different degrees of protection of neighbourhoods. It concerns him little that people might want some determination in how their areas are managed, and people in regional and peri-urban areas might actually like them the way they are, and live there by choice to avoid the financial and density pressures of Melbourne! Guy's invasive policies are a threat, undemocratic and even corrupt!
Albanese should have won leadership contest
He had 60% of the members' votes to Shorten's 40%, but because the caucus members all voted for him (and his corporate-friendly, big population policies) he 'won' by a whisker.
The system is still not reformed enough to be a democracy. Labor members should also vote on policy - such as privatisation policy.
With Shorten and Abbott in charge of the two major parties, democracy hasn't a chance. It's between two authoritarian catholics.
Martin Bryant
I think its strange how we never saw a recent photo of Bryant at the time of the shootings, all photo's released were some 8 years old.
For a guy who had only had very limited use of an air rifle prior to the massacre, he did an amazing job to so efficiently kill moving targets at a ratio of 2 dead to 1 injured with high powered inaccurate weapons.
A cover up for sure & only Government officials & high ranking police officers will ever know the real truth. Shame.
Other government policies are dissected, not population growth?
"Not much we can do about population growth"? Other State and Federal government policies are criticized, dissected, evaluated, discussed, supported and objected to - as is our democratic right. However, when it comes to population growth, why is it considered inevitable? Of course, there is a small part that can't be predicted, as is our natural rate of growth, but it has been below long term replacement levels for decades!
"Growth" has become an industry in itself, and part of our human landscape. It's a no-brainer industry, like multiplying bacteria, with no innovation or intellect required. It takes little upfront investment, and the Immigration Department makes healthy revenues from the many fees and charges. It "saves" money in not training our own young people at TAFEs, industries and universities. The skills come already to use, from overseas. The imported people must buy housing, so it supports the housing industry.
The problems of congestion, unaffordable housing, utility costs, loss of soil and bushland, declining biodiversity, and infrastructure overload are only acknowledged in highsight. The public fail to connect the dots... with policially-engineeered population growth! It seems people are willing to be myopic when it comes directly to the problems directly caused by their own numbers.
Political timeframes are short, and governments enjoy the short-term economic benefits of "growth", without long term strategies, and leave the problems and the burdens to the next government, and further still, to next generations.
A species more "successful" than humans!
It's the stuff of a B-Grade horror movie! The oceans being overwhelmed by these jelly-slimy monsters. It's the stuff of a computer or arcade game -spot and destroy the enemy!
Prolific breeders, high volume of consumption, hard to control their numbers, threatening other species, taking over resources, unbalancing ecosystems and "managing" the oceans for their own interests! It's the marine version of what humans are doing to the rest of the planet.
No Democracy for Hanging Rock - watch ABC 11/10/2013
MRRA Macedon Ranges' Residents Association (MRRA) alert:
On Friday, 11th October, “7.30 Victoria” (with Guy Stayner) on ABC will broadcast a story on the Macedon Ranges Shire Council’s terrible decision to put substantial, privately run developments (including a hotel, conference centre and restaurant amongst many other things) at Hanging Rock, and to do this without any consultation.
As appalling as Council’s behaviour is with Hanging Rock, problems in Macedon Ranges Shire go much deeper. We don’t have democracy in Macedon Ranges, we have a Board of Directors who only feel an occasional urge to tell us what they have done, not ask us if they can do it. The development now proposed for Hanging Rock is not based upon any financial “crisis”, it has been in the works since before 2010, when it was included as a project in the 2010 Loddon Mallee South Regional Growth STRATEGY (not exhibited, no community consultation), into which the Shire’s CEO, Peter Johnston, had primary input. Hanging Rock wasn’t in financial trouble then in 2010 when the development first came up, and despite council now claiming it is and needs the development, Council’s own reports show Hanging Rock made $102,000 profit last year.
Our Association, along with representatives of the recently formed Hanging Rock Action Group, were interviewed for 7.30 Victoria. Please watch if you can, and please pass this email to your contacts.
MRRA Macedon Ranges' Residents Association Home Page
Albanese is obviously doing something right ...
If the mainstream media dislike Albanese, this is an indication that his policies are friendly to the Australian people and inconvenient to the corporate sector. Latham is an interesting and amusing commentator, but he works for Fairfax (regular contributor to the Australian Financial Review) and he has a very narrow understanding of the society. He admitted that he could not really grasp what he was being told about the Tasmanian forests, just prior to running for election, and he supports 'aspirational' voters. To support aspirational voters you need to not understand finite resources or that money does not look after the environment and that what is good for economic growth is not usually good for society overall.
300 African migrants died on the way to Italy
Last week some 300 Africans tragically died while trying to smuggle themselves into Italy, and the Pope angrily conjured up the word "disgrace."! The Pope's response was to ''let us unite our efforts so that similar tragedies do not happen again..."
How does the Pope stop these tragedies happening again? Open borders between the Middle East and Africa will mean migrating people will put a heavy burden on Europe at a time of economic slowdown and massive unemployment.
Populations from Africa and the Middle East are certainly on the move and every "rich" or Western country will eventually have to ask - how many will we take? The refugees of the post war period, and Vietnam, were episodic, but the displaced are in swelling and in overwhelming numbers.
The Sub-Saharan Africa's population is rising faster than the rest of the world because modern medicine and healthcare means more babies are surviving until adulthood, and fewer adults are dying from preventable diseases. Birth rates are high and there is a proliferation of large families. It's predicted that Africa's population will double by 2050. Overpopulation drives conflict, poverty, scarcities and displacement.
The Catholic Church must take some responsibility for the planet's woes, and unprecedented global population growth. Their ban on contraception means that the poorer nations are forced to endure unwanted pregnancies and unsustainable rates of population growth. Islam also must be held accountable. Although less than 20% of Africans claim to be Catholic, the Church has failed to promote humane population sizes - globally.
Science is to "blame" for the drownings, nobody else. It was the result of overloaded boats, fire and overbalancing a lethal weight.
Rather than shutting the door to those escaping to a better life, and adding burdens to the rest of the world, the source of the problem must be addressed.
The Catholic church must take some blame for their ban on contraception. There needs to be a global family planning scheme, with aid and assistance linked only those countries making an effort to implement them. The taboo on speaking on human over-population must be lifted, and realistically addressed.
16 million adolescent girls give birth each year, most of them living in low- and middle-income countries. Pregnancy, childbirth-related complications and unsafe abortions are the main cause of death for adolescent girls in developing countries.
Until lift the religious taboo on family planning and reproductive choices, the rate of unwanted migration of asylum seekers will continue to grow, and over-burden the good-will and compassion of western nations.
We need a national day of mourning for all the asylum seekers who have died or drowned trying to escape their own nations' conflicts and poverty, AND the reluctance of developed countries' failure to promote sustainable population sizes through family planning, and health care. At the same time, countries like Australia actually feed off population growth, something hypocritically built-in to our economy!
Human population, church and kangaroo myth
Sent to ABC news on their feedback page as there was nowhere else to comment:
Many Australians, and others, are sick and tired of the whole kangaroo myth about kangaroos being in 'plague proportions'. All this hysteria about 'numbers out of control', is spread by those with a vested interest in killing our national icon. I've worked in country pubs and heard the spin myself. It's as bad as the yarns about Big Foot. If you look at unbiased research, and there is plenty online, it will reveal the exact opposite. (Perhaps you could begin with www.stopkangarookilling.org ). The problem is the 'ballooning population' of humans spreading out into kangaroo habitat. We need to do something first about our own 'out of control breeding' before we point the finger at other species with whom we share this planet. As David Attenborough asks 'Why is the topic of human population control such a ridiculously taboo issue in this country?' http://theconversation.com/can-christianity-and-population-control-co-exist-18981?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Latest+from+The+Conversation+for+9+October+2013&utm_content=Latest+from+The+Conversation+for+9+October+2013+CID_62f9231bfb3bdb4acc5cb1b60c7a2ce5&utm_source=campaign_monitor&utm_term=Can%20Christianity%20and%20population%20control%20co-exist
We need to do some serious discussion on this, without the intervention of religious superstition. The church should have no place in governments of the 21st century. We cannot continue mindlessly breeding forever. How can we give the church any credibility when you look at the absolute rubbish they so strongly believe, including the idea that they will be 'saved' from this planet and 'taken' to a 'better place', so they can trash this little blue marble all they like. Where are the ethics in this?
Petition to investigate the impact on the Melbourne Zoo
Jenny Gray, Chief Executive Officer, Zoos Victoria: Insist on rigorous investigation into the impacts of the East-West Link on the Melbourne Zoo.
Petition: insist on rigorous investigation into the impacts of the east west link on the Melbourne Zoo
Universities have adopted a business model
Universities have become businesses, an export industry. Rather than benchmark standards of learning, research and education, their budgets, and income, have largely become their raison d' etre.
Apart from the recent $2.3 billion Gillard-government cut-back, universities have long been starved of funds, and are thus forced to rely more on international students. This compromises standards too, and as they are paying highly for studying here, and expect to pass! The carrot on the end of the stick is that many hope to gain residency here, at a time of rising youth unemployment.
Once we had the Colombo plan, where thousands of foreign students between the 1950s and 1980s could study here, and then return to help their countries' economic development.
Now, the Coalition have a $100 million reverse-Colombo plan.
It's an acknowledgement that Australia is not top-ranking any more, and that the Asia Pacific region can match our own (declining) standards.
Pilliga threatened with CSG extraction
It would be a tragedy to lose this forest and all that goes with it . I went to "Take Action" but their Environment Minister is out of date on the website. Hope they update this.
Stop the Pilliga Forest coal seam gas mining
Farmers and environmentalists don't want CSG mining, but the government is likely to face a backlash from the minerals sector unless it acts.
Critics fear that fracking not only opens up cracks in the coal seam, but could also result in gas escaping into drinking water as it rises to the surface. It would be economically reckless and short-sighted for the supply of CSG to destroy valuable farmland, and compromise underground water supplies. There are fears from some landholders that the ban in Victoria will be lifted.
Coal seam gas is a fossil fuel that is almost entirely made up of the greenhouse gas, methane. It's feared that large tracts of farmland will become unavailable for food production, forests and native bushland will be cleared and fragmented.
According to the industry, developing new supplies is absolutely critical if Australia wants to put downward pressure on energy prices. However, the gas industry want to drill more and more wells to meet their lucrative export contracts, and our prices will be linked with the much higher Asian market.
If it comes to a choice of harvesting underground coal seam gas, until it expires, or the long term integrity of our land, food and water supplies, then it would be counter-productive to prioritise the former over the latter.
The Pilliga is a vast expanse of bushland, located between Narrabri and Coonabarabran in western NSW. This iconic area of public land is under threat from the largest coal seam gas project ever proposed for New South Wales.
The Wilderness Society has been most concerned about the possible impact on the Pilliga forest and Channel Country region of Queensland's Cooper Basin. The government is prepared to relax environmental laws, or "green tape", for gas exploration.
Pilliga forest home to many threatened species, including the koala, Pilliga mouse, superb parrot and southeastern long-eared bat and regent honeyeater. A new ecological study of the Pilliga Forest in north-west NSW has found it is a “Noah's Ark” or refuge for many bird and mammal species that are declining across Australia.
Santos says it believes its CSG operations in the Pilliga can supply 25 per cent of the state's gas needs. More than 54% of Australia is covered by coal and gas licences or applications, and its clear that mining companies are riding roughshod over our governments and local communities. Dead animal bones in the bottom of a coal seam gas wastewater pond, according to the Stop Pilliga Coal Seam Gas movement,
The NSW government gave approval for the drilling in the woodlands in eastern Australia under stringent environmental conditions. The NSW government is hoping that a successful development by Santos of its coal-seam gas development in the Pilliga Forest in the northwest of the state will both satisfy some of the state's energy needs and demonstrate that coal-seam gas is not as environmentally harmful as its opponents claim.
Martin Bryant not guilty ?
I've read a few conspiracy books and they're all conclusive the he couldn't have commited this act himself. At the end of the day the great gun buy back was achieved and the government is happy. Everyone has forgotten about Martin and not everyone knows of the treatment he 's recieved before or after the trial. I'd like to see another trial or invetigation with the latest forensics with real experts in this field instead of the kangaroo court he lept into in 1996.
Cynthia McKinney: Libya still being bombed by drones, occupied
From FaceBook (emphasis added).
I was just told that Libya is still being bombed by U.S. drones and that NATO troops from Germany, Italy, France, and US mercenaries are there. Sadly, I was informed that Blacks comprise the bulk of U.S. mercenaries on the ground in Libya. This is not what Malcolm, Martin, the Black Panthers, and others sacrificed for—so that Blacks in the U.S. could go off and help destroy another country, especially one in Africa trying to unite Africans.
Conservationists are being criminalized
30 Greenpeace activists, including an Australian man, have been charged with piracy after a protest at an Arctic oil rig last month. The group held a protest on September 18 in which several activists scaled Gazprom's Prirazlomnaya oil platform in the Barents Sea to protest plans for drilling in the pristine Arctic.
Russian investigators have charged 13 of its activists and one freelance videographer with piracy over an ocean protest against Arctic oil drilling. The charges comes despite president Vladimir Putin's statements last week that the activists "of course are not pirates". The group has denied the charges and accuses Russia of illegally boarding its ship, the Arctic Sunrise, in international waters.
In 2014, the U.N. will receive competing claims on Arctic territory from all of the Arctic nations, and as Russia made clear in 2007, when its explorers planted the Russian flag on the seabed beneath the North Pole, it wants the lion’s share of the Arctic, as well as the seas of oil and gas beneath it.
Putin said that “It’s completely obvious that of course they are not pirates.” But it was also obvious, Putin said, that “these people violated the norms of international law and got dangerously close to the [oil-drilling] platform.”
Russia is stepping up its claim to the Arctic Ocean and the abundant reserves of oil and gas there as its well-exploited Siberian wells are beginning to dwindle. The Arctic represents a lucrative alternative for a country whose budget still heavily relies on natural resource revenues.
Gazprom, a Russian state-owned energy giant,told Reuters that it plans to begin oil production on the Prirazlomnoye platform — the same rig approached by the Greenpeace protesters — by the end of the year.
Humanity's race to secure depleting natural resources for economic growth will mean threatening more remote and extreme locations, and invading pristine areas of our planet. Energy is becoming the new GOLD, and environmentalists and activists are being labelled along with criminals, terrorists and pirates if they dare come in the way of nations, and corporations trying to secure their share of resources!
"The oceans are the last free place on the planet" says wanted fugitive Paul Watson. He believes Sea Shepherd's campaigns against Japan in the waters around Antarctica have saved more than 5,000 whales since they began.
"We look at ourselves as pirates of compassion in pursuit of pirates of greed," he says. "If the oceans die, we die, simple as that."
Melbourne Zoo will be near the ramps to the East West Link
The "tunnel" in the Royal Park will be close to the 151 year old Royal Melbourne Zoo. The Melbourne Zoo says it's examining the impact the construction and operation of a controversial new freeway tunnel will have on its animals. It's planned that the East West Link tunnel will be built under the park with off-ramps not far from the zoo itself. This is the dysfunctional nature of Melbourne's destructive planning - there's no real plan for our city except growth, and reactionary schemes to cope with it.
There will be big freeway off-ramps right near the zoo that you can see and hear and feel when you're approaching it and then you know maybe even inside if you can hear the traffic.
What will be the animals' reaction to construction noise, smells and vibrations on the birds and animals? How will tourists react this this incongruous construction?
Mr Tanner the director of Melbourne Zoo says the zoo is also consulting with other zoos that have experienced construction works nearby. He found that "Oregon Zoo went through a similar project where a subway was built underneath the zoo and they found that there was no affect what so ever upon the animals either before, during or after the construction of their tunnel. So we're using the research data that they have to set up what sort of aspects that may affect our animals". How nice and convenient? What about the reports of other zoologists and ecologists? It's easy to cherry-pick the report findings that are convenient.
Mark Elder is a professor of Zoology at Melbourne university. He says "We know that elephants communicate by seismic signals, those are vibrations that run along the ground. It's possible that vibrations might create some disturbance to these elephants".
The Linking Melbourne Authority which is managing the road project told PM that specialist studies haven’t flagged any significant issues for the zoo or its animals. They won't dig far enough to find any!
Concerns East Weat link may affect Melbourne Zoo
Intermittent hope
If there were never little glimmers of enlightenment such as Mr. Robertson's apparent awareness of the wreckage of endless population growth, most of the non politician populace would have no reason to have any hope at all of maintaining a reasonable quality of life and for a stable or sustainable human population in Australia.
Devastating to read this
The only way that Australians can cope with this terrible vandalism, cruelty and complete disregard for arguably the most beautiful and majestic bio region of Victoria is by being unaware of it. Most Victorians live in Melbourne, a place now devoid of nature in original condition. This arrangement is really convenient because the population is corralled into one region and most of them are there most of the time. Despite these urban dwellers' daily deprivation of a natural environment I think even the most tuned out to nature and plugged into "I Tunes" person in Melbourne would cry if they directly experienced the devastation of our forests and wild life. Some of these city dwellers will read about this but inevitably more pressing city centred matters will override their brief concern. Perhaps the urban spiritual anesthetic blocking out the pain of our lost environment is merciful.
18 October Wildlife Atlas launch Mornington Peninsula
This is your invitation to attend a public lecture organised by the South Eastern Centre for Sustainability as part of its AGM scheduled for 7pm at the Mt Eliza Community Centre on Canadian Bay Rd on 18th October. The lecture will formally launch the Mornington Peninsula Wildlife Atlas by leading ecologist Malcolm Legg. Live music and refreshments will follow.
A government devoid of morals - by Jill Redwood EEG
This comment has been republished as an article here: http://candobetter.net/?q=node/3478
Chainsaws and bulldozers are operating in Orbost, eastern Victoria, and trees have stood for 600 years, sheltering and feeding generations of greater gliders and powerful owls and other species, and being logged.
The lush understorey of ferns and blanket leaf have kept delicate lichens and mosses damp and cool in the hottest summers over the millennia. Liquid eyed marsupials will be huddling terrified in their hollows as these giants crash and splinter in a sickening thud that shakes the earth and shocks the heart. After this brutality, the remaining vegetation is deliberately incinerated with a ring of intensely hot fire. Nothing escapes. It's all part of the 'sustainable forest management' lie that our governments feed us, hoping to hide the reality with a curtain of pleasing language.
Australia's forests have many native wildlife and plant species are teetering on the edge of extinction, but the assistance offered is little more than recognition and shallow sympathy, laced with lip service and PR spin. East Gippsland is a prime example of this situation. It has been described by Professor David Bellamy as "the most diverse area of temperate forest I know of on Earth".
A government devoid of morals: Jill Redwood
Why, in a developed country should small regional volunteer groups, Environment East Gippsland, which run on a meagre budget, be forced to take on the behemoth monster that is the government? The government and its logging agency VicForests agreed to abide by their own laws after being forced to the steps of the Supreme Court.
As a result of EEG's legal challenge, the beautiful glossy black cockatoo finally had a draft action statement drawn up last month after waiting 18 years on the threatened species list. But Minister Walsh's staff have found a loophole — they now learn that although the plan itself is a legal obligation, it doesn't need to have concrete protection measures.
There's no obligation, or guarantee, for the survival of our native animals. Governments "may" make recovery and protection plans, but it's not mandatory. It's all a facade, and political spin.
Email for Minister for Agriculture and Food Security:
[email protected]
Stop a commercial kangaroo industry in Victoria
Sign the Petition
The Municipal Association of Victoria wants to introduce a commercial kangaroo processing industry in Victoria.
Landowners are legally allowed to "manage" their numbers, with the issue of ATCW lethal permits, and instead of leaving the dead kangaroos on the ground to be "wasted", they want to start a commercial kangaroo meat industry.
This is an initiative of the Grampians Shire, where there is a National Park.
We want to petition the State government to protect our native kangaroos, and the justification of their killing for a commercial industry. This idea was rejected in the past as being unsustainable, and continues to be so.
Sign the Petition
Hunter Valley food bowl plan faces urban development pressures
See also : Jonathan Moylan : Anti-coal protester with public support faces huge costs at Supreme Court of 24 Sep 2013.
According to a federal funded report, up to 20 percent of the Hunter Valley’s prime farming land could be lost.
By 2050, world food consumption is likely to increase by 70 per cent and much of that additional demand will be in Asia. A report for the Federal Government's Sustainable Population Strategy defined ‘important agricultural land’ as that which is the most fertile, capable and productive land in the region which holds the ability to respond to a changing climate, market forces and socio-economic conditions in the future.
Extensive development within the Newcastle and Lake Macquarie regions has further heightened the importance of preserving fertile farm land.
The growth is dismissed explained as the "generation gap continues to grow, with the sons and daughters of farmers forced to look elsewhere for careers". Nothing about our record levels of immigration, and our socially-engineered population growth.
The Herald: Pressure Builds in Hunter Food Bowl
Bill Shorten recently endorsed the benefits of ongoing immigration and population growth for Australia, because that's how we've always been! He's a "big Australia" man, like the ill-fated Kevin Rudd. Economics is quantifiable, and figures are easy to comprehend. Growth is an easy definition to account for, but more subtle, grass-roots and environmental concerns are largely abstract or incremental. Governments take the easy route, and measure their success through economic growth, and population growth is the easiest route. They ignores the important implications of climate change, compromised food security, extreme weather events, living standards and the costs of infrastructure. The latter are all hindsight issues, left for future governments (and generations) to sort out.
With little arable land in Australia, the welfare of this, and future generations, should be paramount - not housing estates! Post war high rates of permanent immigration were justified in the post war era and up to the last decade, but not now. If urban development is eating into fertile food producing land, then priorities are all wrong and corrupt.
Myopically, the submissions for the Federal government's Sustainable Population Strategy were ignored by then Minister for (Sustainable) population, Tony Burke.
Food Magazine : Fitzgibbon's Hunter Valley food bowl plan faces urban development pressures.
Albanese and Shorten differ on immigration, population growth
Earlier tonight on the Q & A debate for the leadership of the Australian Labor Party, Bill Shorten (approximately 44 minutes into the 1 hour, 5 minute broadcast) gave a long speech about how the Labor Party was a Party for high immigration and population growth, whether for refugees, "skills migration" or family re-union. Shorten acknowledged that Australia was environmentally fragile, but quickly restated "immigration is a plus for us".
Anthony Albanese responded that we first need to build the necessary infrastructure, make sure that we have proper settlement programs and ensure that the immigrants had skills that matched our needs.
It is many decades since these conditions were met. As a result, immigrants have been crammed into already overcrowded cities. Housing costs have increased as a result of insufficient housing stock for the larger numbers of people requiring shelter. Roads have been gridlocked and our schools, hospitals, public transport and other infrastructure have been strained as a result of having to handle larger numbers.
Had Anthony Albanese's proposals been Federal Government policy, it would not have been possible for the Federal Government to impose the chaotic immigration programs that we have experienced in recent decades.
The Monthly - More low-brow refugee policy debate
In The Monthly "Election Issue" there is an article by Christos Tsiolkas entitled, 'Why we hate refugees'. The author states that "All our political parties know that we are underpopulated...". He goes on to suppose that there are huge amounts of racism in Australia and that Australians are ungenerous.
The basis for this supposition appears to be that he himself has racist reactions to people he sees as foreign and presumably also feels ungenerous. He sees Government and Opposition policies as similarly racist and ungenerous. However he uncritically buys all the other government economic propaganda economic for population growth. He does not seem capable of looking at the problem of democracy and how everything is getting more scarce and more expensive - housing, oil, gas, water, land ... This article is interesting because it sort of epitomises what passes for political comment in Australia - never questions the cause of anything, just roves about imagining individual motives and looking for sin.
It's really hard to know how to respond to propaganda like this. There is a false argument that being compassionate to refugees requires that we accept that Australia is underpopulated, or in reverse, that anyone who doesn't think Australia is underpopulated is not only anti-refugee but "hates" them.
This is irrational. Feeling sorry for refugees is a normal response that has no logical basis in whether or not you believe that Australia is over, under of benignly populous. That is the feeling part. The issue for government however, needs to be logistically accountable.
Policy and pity should also include the situation of people in refugee camps in places like Kenya, who may spend many years in makeshift villages on barren, sun-baked earth, waiting for a government to sponsor them out.
The author of this article seems to have no pity or interest in these people, of which Australia sponsors about 20,000 annually. The author does not seem interested in the wars that caused these peoples' displacement either.
He is fixated on those people who arrive via boats.
It is really worrying that something so simplistically polemic as this poorly researched piece can actually make it to the Monthly. It means that the reading public are in a substantial majority, so naive as to be fooled these days by almost artless propaganda
Indicator of economy needed other than the GDP
There needs to be another indicator of economic well-being, and aims, other than by calculating the GDP.
Of course the size of Australia's "economy" will increase with all the new arrivals. However, human societies are much more complex and demanding than simply economic data, for the benefit of big property developers and corporations!
There are nations will bigger economies than Australia's, but that doesn't make them liveable, or desirable, or sustainable.
Indonesia's GDP is growing, and its economy is now larger than Australia’s in purchasing power parity terms. In 2013-2014, Australia’s assistance to Indonesia will be worth an estimated $646.8 million.
Indonesia's environment is being challenged by population pressures and strong economic growth. The country ranked 157th out of 229 countries in the world in terms of GDP per capita. The Indonesian population therefore experiences many poverty-related problems common to developing nations such as high infant and maternal death rates.
Despite the healthy GDP, asylum seekers seek Australia, not Indonesia!
If land is subdivided for housing, and towers built, people will come. Our government is actively "projecting" population growth through open borders. It may "boost" our economy, but ignores the trailing debt and costs to living standards. An economy with entrenched population growth is logically unsustainable.
Costs of living are blowing out, housing is unaffordable, there are few jobs, congestion is hampering productivity and Victoria is going downhill. There needs to be a break-away from this undesirable and backward form of "growth" as a sign of progress!
Urban planning and population density