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Richard Heinberg will be visiting Australia and lecturing in most or all Australian state capitals in September. In Melbourne he will be appearing on September 22nd, 2012, at the Wheeler Centre. Richard writes about oil depletion and survival and is the author of ten books, including The Party’s Over, Peak Everything, and the soon-to-be-released The End of Growth.

Jenny Warfe and Vivienne Ortega will be organising the event in Victoria on behalf of Sustainable Population Australia (Victorian Branch).
$5 entry.

Information: www.population.org.au/heinberg2012 Inquiries: Jenny Warfe warfej[AT]bigpond.com

If our population doesn't grow, the economy stalls
July 16, 2012, Matthew Kidman

THE first policy a new federal government should dust off when elected next year is ''Big Australia''. The Kevin Rudd initiative aimed at growing Australia's population from 22.3 million to 35 million by 2050.

Within weeks of taking the top job, Julia Gillard scrapped Big Australia realising that few votes would be garnered from the initiative. A combination of xenophobic and anti-growth feeling swelled and that was enough to bin the whole exercise.

The reality is though that without population expansion Australian economic growth will stall, placing pressure on company valuations and the performance of the sharemarket. Live examples of this already exist in Japan, Italy and Greece. Australia needs a demographic policy that involves targeted population growth.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the economy grew at an annual pace of 3.2 per cent in the 1990s of which 1.5 per cent was contributed by population growth. In the first decade of the new century, the local economy ratcheted up its growth to just under 4 per cent per year of which population growth can be credited with 1.8 per cent.
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As is well documented, the Australian population, like many other Western nations, is getting older.

In the latest census released last month, it stated that the median age of Australia was 37 years old, up five years in two decades. This is not in itself a concern given that the working population, defined as those people aged between 15 and 65 years, actually increased as a percentage of all people during the same period. The working population is the productive component of society.

This, though, is about to change. It is estimated that by 2015 the median age of Australians will jump to 39 years and the working age will start to shrink from about 67 per cent of the population to 66 per cent. While it does not sound significant, it effectively means demographics will go from being supportive of economic growth to a handbrake.

The Reserve Bank of Australia released a report in 2010 analysing the impact of demographic change on economic growth in a number of countries. It concluded that from 2011 to 2020 demographic changes relating to population growth and the size of the working-age population would reduce economic growth by a full 1 per cent per year in Japan. In the prior decade it had contributed a positive 1.1 per cent.

That is enormous burden to carry for a country that is struggling to grow because of the Japanese penchant for saving instead of spending.

The US is in a better position, but will suffer from a similar fate. In the period from 1996 to 2005 demographic change boosted economic growth by 1.3 per cent each year. But this is forecast to drop to just 0.5 per cent from 2011 to 2020.

A study by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco in 2011 said the ageing population was already having a significant impact on the sharemarket, with the price-to-earnings multiple investors are willing to pay for equities already falling as the median age increases.

The second-largest economy in the world and Australia's biggest trading partner, China, will see the impact of demographics move from 1.4 per cent a year to just 0.2 per cent in this decade.

Many pundits will argue that growth is not compulsory but the economic contractions taking place in Europe should remind everyone how painful and socially disruptive it can be.

Australia's population has grown approximately 1.4 per cent a year over the past 20 years. If this rate continued to 2050, then Australia's population would hit 38 million, some 3 million more than what Rudd's Big Australia would contain. So fears of the population growing out of control are ill-founded. If a targeted population growth policy was implemented, it would require a careful selection process that kept the nation's median age down and, more importantly, retained a similar-sized working population.

The case for an orchestrated increase in the population gains currency when one considers the decline in the other two major contributors to economic growth - terms of trade and labour productivity.

The terms of trade have been a major driver of economic expansion in recent years, but it may have peaked recently with the crest of the mining boom. Meanwhile, labour productivity has been declining in relative terms for a decade with no signs of reversing.

There are strong arguments against population growth, mostly concerning social change, environmental pressures and a lack of infrastructure. Policy must accommodate all of these concerns but none should be insurmountable if a detailed plan is constructed. In fact, if Australia managed to come to terms with its poor infrastructure, dearth of water and lack of geographical planning, the country would be significantly improved from a lifestyle and productivity perspective.

Finally, the world is forecast to grow from today's 7 billion people to about 9 billion by 2060. After this it is expected to stall and then eventually shrink. With less than 23 million people, Australia, as a developed nation, should be expected to contribute to accommodating more people in a crowded world.

Former fund manager Matthew Kidman is a director of WAM Capital.

Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/business/if-our-population-doesnt-grow-the-economy-stalls-20120715-22445.html#ixzz22m029471

Published on PressTV on 25 July 2012.

Syrian security forces and armed gangs are currently fighting in the cities of Aleppo and Homs, while calm has returned to most parts of the capital, Damascus, Press TV reports.

Foreign-backed armed rebels have attacked security checkpoints in Aleppo, while there have been reports of sporadic clashes between Syrian troops and armed groups in Homs.

The security forces are battling rebels in the al-Bab and Sha'ar districts of Aleppo, where many members of the armed opposition have reportedly surrendered.

Syrian security forces engaged the rebels all across the country on Tuesday, with Naher Aisheh, a suburb of Damascus, being the latest area fully cleared of foreign-backed armed gangs. Most neighborhoods are now calm in the capital.

Meanwhile, security forces have foiled repeated attempts by armed groups to infiltrate into Syrian territory from neighboring countries.

Syria has been experiencing unrest since March 2011, with demonstrations being held both against and in support of President Bashar al-Assad's government.

The Syrian government says outlaws, saboteurs, and armed terrorists are the driving factor behind the unrest and deadly violence while the opposition accuses the security forces of being behind the killings.

Damascus also says that the chaos is being orchestrated from outside the country and the security forces have been given clear instructions not to harm civilians.

See also: Syrian forces destroy armed gangs hideout in Homs, seize weapons of 16 July 2012, Syrian forces, gunmen clash in Aleppo of 22 July 2012, Syrian troops clear Khan Sheikhun in Idlib of armed groups of  July 2012, Syrian forces kill terrorists in Douma suburb of the capital Damascus of 29 June 2012, Calm restored in Damascus, fighting continues in Homs, Aleppo of 24 July 2012.

The above strategies would be a reversal of Gillard's betrayal of the Australian Nation.

More simply I suggest a financial governance protocol for Australia's Annual Foreign Aid Budget.

Like any nation, Australia has a limited budget and a fair and reasonable quota for its foreign immigration to respect social carrying capacity.

Once asylum seeker limit is reached, it is a case of adopting New Zealand's internationally accepted policy, and so subsequent illegals are to be returned to the country of illegal/unauthorised departure - Indonesia mainly. The full economic cost of receival, processing and return flights is to be fairly deducted from Australia's total Foreign Aid Budget, including the exorbitant cost of Australia's' US crusades in Afghanistan.

So, for our nation's fair and sound international governance that respects its citizens' finances and carrying capacity, means that the asylum seeker problem may be resolved fairly, expeditiously and supported by targeted media become an effective deterrent to people smugglers, would-be asylum seekers and negligent Indonesian coast watch.

Not only shall the the excess illegals be lawfully returned to their country of departure (complicit Indonesia mainly), but the associated costs are deducted from Australia's annual Foreign Aid Budget, including patsying to the US strategic war in Afghanistan.

The LibLabs can stage crocodile tears in our Nation's Parliament, but their joint uselessness in border control demands a National Citizen Initiated Referendum to overrule Party Politics incompetence.

Labor's bottomless overdraft is unconstitutional Treasury theft that demands a double dissolution of parliament.
No government has an electoral mandate to bankrupt the Natiomal Treasury.
Gillard has always been a Labor puppet. Her spend thrift addiction has set new lows beyond electoral pock barrelling, beyond chronic cheque writing Ruddism.
Exceeding Treasury Overdraft is a seditious crime and so ought to be life imprisonment for the Prime Minister.

John Marlowe

The end is in sight for Australia's mining and investment boom, according to Deloitte Access Economics' June 2012 quarter Business Outlook, but HSBC says there is a lot more still to come.

"The government has built a budget that is wholly captive to the mining boom and the taxes to be collected from mining taxes," Joe Hockey told reporters in Sydney on Monday. "Now it's apparent the budget is unravelling because it was built on smoke and mirrors."

All booms inevitably end.

The Labor Government indicated that there would be a further increase in the permanent-entry immigration program from 163,000 in 2010–11, 185,000 in 2011–12 and up to 190,000 in 2012–13. The government is making immigration decisions assuming that the minerals boom will require a huge increase in skilled workers who must be drawn in part from migration.

The official immigration program doesn't count the nearly 14,000 migrants who arrive in the humanitarian program, or a number of smaller categories. It doesn't include the 25,000 or so Kiwis who cross the Tasman each year, or the international students for whom visa requirements have again been loosened or the sub-section 457 temporary work visas which have been recently embraced and promoted by both sides of politics. The 457 program is uncapped and untargeted.

Dr Bob Birrell, says our skilled migration intake was more than enough to service the mining boom. “But the bulk of current migration has little to do with providing scarce skills to the resource industries,” he says. “Rather, it is delivering two major streams. One is a predominantly professional flow to the big cities where the immigrants are being employed in people--servicing industries such as health and welfare. The other, is a mass of people on temporary visas such as students and working holiday makers work on a casual basis".

Our government also assume that the rest of the Australian economy will surge, generating a nation-wide shortage of skilled workers. Most of the migrants in the record-high intake will end up in Sydney and Melbourne. Now, according to Deloitte Access Economics, Australia's budget surplus has evaporated and its mining investment boom has only two years to run.

This year's forecast $1.5 billion budget surplus is no longer there, and Treasurer Wayne Swan will have to decide whether to cut back spending again in order to create a surplus.

Feast of famine, apparently Australia will need more highly skilled workers regardless of economic conditions, and more tertiary education funding is essential to ensure the supply of qualifications, according to Skills Australia Amendment (Australian Workforce and Productivity Agency) Act 2012. They report that demand for high-level qualifications would grow more than twice as quickly as supply whether Australia faced boom or bust. It's a denial of our unemployment rate, and the heavy costs of tertiary education. Universities and TAFES are underfunded, and operating under a business model. It's assumed that the Economy, based on infinite numbers, is the basis of our future, our growth, rather than finite natural resources and environmental capacity to provide for living standards - and the inevitable pollution/waste from a growing economy/population. Immigration is driving rapid population growth and causing cost of living and congestion problems – pressures on food, water, land and energy supplies, housing affordability and species extinctions.

What will happen after the mining boom ends, many Australians ask. The hundreds of millions of people being taken out of rural poverty to the urban lifestyle must eat food that they buy rather than grow. However, swathes of agricultural land is being sold to foreigners grabbing land.

Once the boom is over, it could leave the economy vulnerable to crippling tourism, manufacturing, and education services, said BIS Shrapnel in its Long Term Forecast 2011-26. Australia, unlike many resource-rich countries, does not have a “sovereign wealth fund” to save the wealth of its resources boom. Norway has an enormous fund which has strict rules meaning it can’t be spent in a hurry. Even northern neighbours East Timor and Papua New Guinea have some form of sovereign wealth fund. The minerals boom is sucking skilled labour and investment out of other sectors. The high Australian dollar is killing manufacturing export industries and tourism.

Service industries are surviving, but other industries such as manufacturing, tourism and agriculture are going backwards.

BIS Shrapnel chief economist Frank Gelber says rather than channelling the financial benefits from the mining boom into a prosperity fund, they should be invested in infrastructure. As MP Kelvin Thomson says, numerous studies show that new arrivals come with a big infrastructure requirement – they bring their families with them, and all require houses, roads, schools, hospitals etc., and many require English-language and other forms of assistance.

Australia's two-speed economy could slow to Victoria's snail-pace, and struggle to provide infrastructure and jobs to keep abreast with our politically-determined population growth - based on dubious "skills shortages"!

See also: The end of the mining boom? Access Economics' warning may be premature of Monday, 23 July 2012 by Cara Waters. Comment: In any case, the 'boom', based upon the extraction of humankind's finite bounty of non-renewable fossil fuels and metals could not possibly last for more than one or two hundred years at most, a miniscule period of time in comparison to the 30,000 years for which intelligent human communities have inhabited Earth. If Vivienne's more pessimistic economic prediction is borne out, then, at least, future generations stand some hope of getting a share of the mineral bounty that our greedy corporate elites want to dig up now. If we succeed in taking back the control of this country from the greedy foreign and domestic elites, we may find a way to have a more fulfilling future whilst also preserving some of our bounty for future generations. - Ed

Can anyone tell us what all this digging is for? What are these disruptive earthworks for?

John Marlowe,

No, not American. And not civic; Civil. My reference to a civil code is a reference to Roman Law as revamped by Napoleon in the early 19th Century. Almost all of Europe, even the countries he did not rule, eventually took it up because it works so well. The Germanic and Nordic countries were slower to do so because they had never been under the Roman Empire so did not have that basic identification with Roman law. Britain and, I think, Portugal (which came under British influence, unfortunately) also did not take it up and these countries have similar problems of poor democracy and huge inequalities and poverty. Basically there are two major kinds of legal systems in the European world including among ex-European colonies: Roman and British and they have completely different origins and effects.

Where do Australian values fit in here? Well, once you have identified them, you need to create laws to enshrine and defend them. Examples of important laws are your rights to inherit from your parents vs your parents' rights to leave their assets to whomever. Another important right might be equality of sexes. Another one might be the right to cheap housing. Another one might be the right to an income. Another one might be the right to get out of a commercial agreement that is manifestly unfair. Think of some others. What would you like?

Basically a civil code is a code of rights for citizens that can be enforced at law. The European Civil Codes are comprehensive and constantly reviewed. They are products of the French Revolution (which lasted several generations and post-dated Napoleon's reign).

I know a lot about the antique and modern origins of this code and the differences between Roman and British law. These different law systems have huge impacts on whether or not property gets divided up and becomes concentrated in private or public hands. The British system is the bad one that causes overpopulation. The Roman system is much better. Of course most English speakers don't have any idea of the differences and assume what they have been told that the English legal system is the best is true.

"The Civil Code

Napoleon in later life considered the Civil Code to be the most significant of his achievements. The Code represented a comprehensive reformation and codification of the French civil laws. Under the ancien regime more than 400 codes of laws were in place in various parts of France, with common law predominating in the north and Roman law in the south. The Revolution overturned many of these laws. In addition, the revolutionary governments had enacted more than 14,000 pieces of legislation. Five attempts were made to codify the new laws of France during the periods of the National Convention and the Directory. Through the efforts of Napoleon the drafting the new Civil Code in an expert commission, in which Jean-Etienne-Marie Portalis took a leading role, took place in the second half of 1801. Napoleon attended in person 36 of the commission's 87 meetings. Although the draft was completed at the end of 1801, the Code was not published until 21 March 1804. The Civil Code represents a typically Napoleonic mix of liberalism and conservatism, although most of the basic revolutionary gains - equality before the law, freedom of religion and the abolition of feudalism - were consolidated within its laws. Property rights, including the rights of the purchasers of the biens nationaux were made absolute. The Code also reinforced patriarchal power by making the husband the ruler of the household. The Napoleonic Code was to be promulgated, with modifications, throughout the Empire. The Civil Code was followed by a Code of Civil Procedure in 1806, a Commercial Code in 1807, a Criminal Code and Code of Criminal Procedure in 1808 and a Penal Code in 1810. A Rural Code was debated, but never promulgated. The Code Napoleon, renamed the Civil Code, was retained in its majority after the restoration of the Bourbons in 1815. The Civil Code has served as the model for the codes of law of more than twenty nations throughout the world."

Go to the link to see the subjects covered under the code. These codes are continuously revised but continue to be based on the first French publication of 1804.

Thank you Sheila,

The topic is important enough to breakaway from this biodiversity issue, though respectfully critical as it is; but to explore and debate the root causes of the adverse impacts of human overpopulation on Australian ecology.

Australia is not unique, but is part of the same global human migration and overbreeding problem.

Immigration just facilitates the movement of people, it does not solve the people overpopulation problem. It just moves the problem from one place to another - due to push factors such as civil war and due to pull factors such as Australia's global image of wealth and fortune - which Wayne Swan constantly trumpets, especially overseas it seems.

But your term 'Civil Rights' sounds American, and I am not familar with it and to how it may play out in the Australian context. Australians should not follow Americanism, but Australianism. So define it and explain it please - it deserves an article and I will be keen to contribute.

But, I propose starting at a much deeper socio-psychological level - at 'values', then from there 'attitudes' and then 'behaviours'. What is Australian? What are Australian 'values', 'attitudes' and 'behaviours'. (Hopefully, not what we saw on Channel 10's 'The Shire' last night).

Then within that context, what rights do locals have. Who are 'locals'? What rights do foreigners have? When do 'foreigners' become 'locals' and do they automatically have a right equal to locals or do that have to comply with some social mores? Go to an Arab the nation and discover if you have to comply with the local mores. Australia should not be so politically correct and seek the apex of moral high ground. The whole thing must work in the rough and tumble of Australian society, else it is all focus group utopianism that will only fuel ethnic tensions, xenopohobia and then outright racist violence. Let's not go there!

There is nothing wrong with such a debate. It is mature.
But please let leave the prejudice aside. At no time have I vilified any race. I don't care if people are green with pink spots. What I care most about is when the incumbent people are usurped by foreigners. I suggest a good historical tale is one of the infamous Highland Clearances of Scotland of the 18th Century. Read background. When you read it, compare it to Australia in 1788 and then now. It is a real wake up to passive compacent descendents of colonists.

Now I could have Uzbekistan ancestry but I don't, but it doesn't matter. The issue is one of universal principle. If you can conceive a principle of justice workable ands respectful to both locals and foreigners, then it has to be universally applicable.

I just happen to have Scottish ancestry, but I regard myself as Australian, not a hair mongrel! I have been to Scotland but I yearn setting fooit back in Australia, my home. Anyone who commits when they are honoured with Australian citizenship should feel an Australian passion - that may take time and they can be tuti-fruity for all I care. But if they are here to usurp, then they are not welcome in Australia.

This is a vital debate for all nations, but unfortunately missing from the mainstream media, scared and too immature to touch it.
Thank you for persisting. I feel I was misinterpreted before.

John Marlowe