By kilo most kangaroo meat sold by Coles & Woolies is pet food selling retail under $4 a kilo. So it is a low margin product for the cheapest meat market around - domestic cats and dogs "not for human consumption". These are the "huge quantities of this meat to their customers". So are roo shooters proud of their work? Shooting wildlife for pet meat for pittance? Get a real job!
Check out a leading brand of roo pet meat at Coles:
Paws Fresh Pet Foods
PO Box 10562, Southport BC Qld 4215
http://www.pawsfresh.com.au/pet-food/default.asp
It is in these PAWS 1 kg plastic bags of mince that thousands of Australia's kangaroos end up. With Coles and Woolies having dominant market buying power with dominant market share of the shameful 'roo trade', they control and almost set kangaroo meat prices paid to wildlife poachers.
If PH had an argument with any merit, PH would supply referenced facts, rather than resort to argument ad hominem (shooting the messenger 'do gooder' while avoiding the 'do gooders' argument). How lame!
Consumers buy roo cat food because its cheap - simple as that! It's even cheaper than old mutton. It's like ripping out precious native forests in East Gippsland and WA so it can be woodchipped it on the cheap and flogged to Japanese pulp companies like Itochu for just $2.50 a tonne!
Just last month [21-Oct-09], Japan's Itochu Corporation announced that "it is expected to push for lower woodchip prices after terminating its purchase agreement with failed agribusiness group Great Southern."
Source: WA Business News
Go to Japan and see how the Japanese revere and protect their own forests like the famous Beech Tree Forest in Shirakami Sanchi.
"The hills and mountains of Japan cover 70 % of the land. Forests cover a total area of 62 million acres that is equal to 67 % of the land. But "even though two thirds of its land is covered by forests, Japan is one of the world largest timber importers. Foreign imported timber is cheaper than Japan's domestically grown timber, even after considering freight costs for importing timber."
SOURCE: http://www.saveamericasforests.org/JapansForests/Japansforests.htm
Australian immigrants and their descendants since their colonial exploitation culture are mugs for raping Australia's natural heritage and wildlife and flogging it for a song to foreign profiteers who make the real profit.
Perhaps PH can quote facts about the percentage gourmet roo meat that actually makes it to expensive restaurants and retail for $100+ a kilo at the table. If the roo 'industry' was smart and treated kangaroo as gourmet like abalone, despite still being immoral poaching of Australian wildlife, it would have a stronger case for itself as a viable and sustainable practice.
But pet food?
It's hell for leather out there in western Queensland with thousands shot and no controls on humane treatment or hygiene. Any hobo can register as a roo shooter and make a quick quid, but bugger all profit. The so-called 'industry' is basically a knackery supplier and has literally gone to the dogs.
Perhaps road kill ends up on the shelves as well - wombat, echidna, Tasy Devil, whatever, who'll notice? The cat?
Comments
Bark-counting collars.
No James, the collars are fraught with potential legal dangers. Any vexatious dog-owner can readily modify his/her dog's barking behaviour for the duration of the monitoring period. In order to avoid rebuke, or a fine, the owner of a dog wearing the bark-counting device can choose to keep the suspect dog inside, or leave it with a friend where possibly less populated environmental conditions ensure it will not bark.
Then what do we have? Documentation that provides the dog-owner with legal evidence that the dog was not barking, and that the person who complained likely made a false statement! Once again, the person who has been unwillingly drawn into this unhealthy situation is subjected to even more complications.
The emotional, legal and environmental position of the person on the wrong end of the barking is further degraded.
Fitting such a collar to a dog is a clear signal to any uncooperative dog-owner that habitual barking will be recorded. What better way to warn someone that he/she should keep the dog quiet --- at least for the time it takes to prove the dog was not barking as reported?
Not only that, but as yet there are no professional human health studies that recommend how much barking disturbs sleep, interferes with family communications and constitutes psychological deficit. Dr Craig Mixon (Californian psychologist) has written extensively on The Harm Done, but no-one has yet announced how many barks per hour will cause sleep arousals (with consequent drowsy driving).
I wouldn't want my pilot, ambulance officer or school bus driver to be a victim of bark-induced sleep deprivation. Yet this is occurring everywhere, it is not restricted to poorer socio-economic areas. I live in Toorak, Melbourne, and also spent years in Ascot, Queensland, both areas where one would not expect irresponsible dog ownership. But right across Australia, in every nook and cranny, at every level, the statistics are showing rising complaint numbers on an environmental pollution that you would more likely associate with socially under-privileged, under-informed groups.
It must be just another sign that the Australia we once had is not the Australia that our valiant Diggers honoured with their lives. The title of this website is "We Can Do Better". And a good part of doing better is to do the right thing for neighbours. Just be nice. That's all.
People are capable of eating anything
People are capable of eating anything that is available. Most people eat for flavour and customs, and ignore the pain ethics. About 95% of pigs are raised in intensive conditions, and sows can be in sow stalls pinned for up to 16 weeks in the one tight metal stall. Piglets get little maternal care, and it is quite legal to de-tail them, castrate and extract their eye teeth without pain relief. They are "processed" at about 6 months without normal lives.
Factory farmed hens are de-beaked, and suffer in cramped cages. This is to stop the cannibalism caused by stress. There are no ethics, and all these abuses are "legal"! It is all sanitised by supermarkets and left to consumers to decide what is moral and ethical. If it produces money, it is saleable and people don't see, and often don't care, about the cruelty involved.
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Electronic bark-counting collars an investment easily justified
Thanks for that news, Peter.
I think the money invested in such devices by councils would be well worth the investment.
Would retailers risk law suits over Kangaroo meat anaphylaxis?
Extremely biased article from a do-gooder who does not understand the food chain. If what you say is true, why are all the major food retailers (Woolworths, Coles etc.), selling huge quantities of this meat to their customers. I do not think that the legal department of "Woolies" would open themselves up to a huge lawsuit from someone with an anaphylaxis reaction to their product. It is so rare that it makes your article laughable. The grocery stores still sell peanuts, do they not? It is up to the consumer to decide whether or not to buy kangaroo, and many of them have made their choice with their wallets. Some of the best chefs and restaurants in the world serve kangaroo, and I know many people who have consumed it to their utmost satisfaction. Maybe your article should be a bit more "balanced", and not based on pure emotion from what you may have seen on television.
Electronic Bark-counting Collar
Councils everywhere are hamstrung by their state's barking control legislation's use of imprecise terminology.
Here's part of Tasmania's Dog Control Act 2000 ...
Dogs creating nuisance
Section 46:
(2) The occupier of any premises must not permit a dog to be, become or create a nuisance on those premises.
Penalty: Fine not exceeding 5 penalty units. (A "penalty unit" is currently $120.)
(3) A dog is a nuisance if –
(a) it behaves in a manner that is injurious or dangerous to the health of any person; or
(b) it creates a noise, by barking or otherwise, that persistently occurs or continues to such an extent that it unreasonably interferes with the peace, comfort or convenience of any person in any premises or public place.
At first glance this all looks very reasonable, however if you are an Animal Management Officer (AMO) or anyone else lumbered with enforcement tasks, then it's so unreasonable as to be virtually unworkable. For example, where's the definition of "injurious" and where's that for "health"? Similarly, where are the definitions of "continues" and "to such an extent" and "unreasonably" and "peace" and "comfort" and "convenience"?
These subjective terms impose such legal minefields on councils that it's no wonder many of them have entered denial mode and won't come out. This leaves innumerable barking victims with no legal recourse for relief so it's no wonder that some tormented persons prefer to kill the dog rather than move out.
Some states have attempted to resolve the above dilemmas by time-slotting - that is, a dog may bark for six daytime minutes per hour or three night-time minutes per hour before its owner commits an offence. There are several serious problems that render this concept impractical. For one thing, dog's can't tell the time. For another, who is going to stand outside the premises alleged to contain a barking dog and record the woofing with a stopwatch? For another, who's going to believe his tally anyway?
In the last few years a new device, developed in Australia, has been trialled by some councils. This electronic device logs each bark as a function of time - the time being perhaps 7-10 days. At the end of this period the collar, which can't be removed by the dog's owner, is taken off by the council which fitted it and its data is downloaded for examination.
The Onkaparinga council in South Australia was one of the first councils to trial this device and its management expresses some satisfaction with the results obtained - when owners consented to its use. The Knox City Council in Victoria is currently proposing to not only fit the collar, but to do so whether the dog's owner likes it or not.
Interested persons are invited to visit http://www.pebri.net/index_32.htm and assess the matter for themselves.
There are currently provisions for commenting both on the Quiet Tasmania News website and that of the Knox Leader.
Peter Bright
Tasmania
www.quietas.net
www.pebri.net
Pro-growth parasite investors are benefiting from housing demand
Housing - a roof over our heads - is a basic social need, and a right. The growth lobby have milked this need to create wealth for a few elites. By manipulating the demand for housing through population growth, the price of land and housing has skyrocketed and globalised. This "improvement" ("recovery") has made investors happy, and boosted the mortgage industries, stamp duty collection, real estate, land developers and the building industries. Building applications, land subdivisions and new growth corridors boost the coffers of local councils, and as more people flood into our cities, demand outstrips supply.
Every night in Geelong at least 70 families are sleeping rough on the city's streets.
Budget-priced rooms above pubs are booked out months in advance and caravan parks are full. Rental inspections for houses under $300 attract dozens of families and waiting lists for public housing have blown out. (Geelong Advertiser 10th Oct)
Australia used to be a land of high home ownership. With the median price of housing, in Melbourne, recently reaching nearly $500,000, it means that many wage earners, and professionals too, are finding home-ownership not a dream but a nightmare! Home ownership is increasingly out of reach for normal Australians.
Pro-growth parasitic investors are benefiting while living standard are being eroded and people are falling between the cracks.
More like Hitler than Napoleon
I think what you say about Rudd's Napoleon complex is a little disrespectful to Napoleon, Tigerquoll. If Napoleon hadn't had every dynasty in Europe against him in the anti-revolutionary coalitions that gave rise to the Vienna treaties (which subsequently shaped our distorted world) he wouldn't have gone to all those wars. Napoleon was a very smart person who left the French with an extraordinary code that has helped them to preserve democracy. Napoleon may have censored the newspapers and run a country obsessed with economic growth for a while, but France was under attack. The monarchy came back twice as it was and did even worse censorship AND brought back religion and it was not until 1846, some time after Napoleon died, that the French obtained a lasting republic and freedom from state religions. Of course you don't hear any of this from the anglophone histories because they were written for the dynasties, which took over the religions.
Rudd strikes me as a lot closer to Hitler in his nationalistic policies: there is the obsession with growing the population, with industrial expansion, and he doesn't like innovatory art. Both of them thought that oil would last forever, too, I think. There are differences, of course, Rudd doesn't wear a moustach.
Unless of course you meant Napoleon, the Pig, in Animal Farm. I agree that the resemblances there are quite striking. And not just with Rudd, with the whole Labor Government. And Mr Jones in the pub that the pigs began to fraternise with, that would be the property developer and banking coalitions, where you can no longer tell the difference between the government and big business. And all of them trying to work the people harder and fill Australia with more people than it can comfortable support, just to make money for themselves. All the while telling the animals that they just don't understand and need to be educated - for instance with regional forums about population growth where demographers induce a state of helplessness by telling them all that no-one can stop population growth.
That is not to let the Libs off either. It's just that they don't add insult to injury with the same McDonald's grin, "And would you some fries to go with your burning haystack, sir?"
Sheila Newman, population sociologist
home page
Copyright to the author. Please contact sheila [AT] candobetter org or the editor if you wish to make substantial reproduction or republish.
Rudd's Napoleon complex
Rudd's role as international diplomat has been inculcated over years before he became PM from his diplomatic roles in Stockholm, Beijing and Taipei, then as Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs. Now as PM, Rudd, comfortable in this arena has left Foreign Minister Smith to the lesser tasks and has self-elevated himself from diplomat to international statesman. Rudd enjoys mixing it with the big players and must surely feel in his element.
But the statesman thing has him punching above his weight, which may sound patriotic, except that desire seems to have morphed into an envy of the big players. Why can't Australia become one of the big players too he feels? But how? Rudd's rationale seems to have played out in a form of catch up strategy by building a big population and by big spending.
It is as if Rudd at one of his formative diplomatic functions was on occasion unfairly criticised by a big bully player making condescending remarks about Australia not being a significant player on the world stage. Rudd like most Aussies would be rightly offended. But this may have impressed upon Rudd an inferiority complex.
Now that Rudd has usurped power and position, personal complexes can be played out. But played out as national policy by mere privilage of position is undemocratic. Rudd may desire bigness but why force feed Australia into bigness? It is as if Rudd has a Napoleon complex in national representative terms.
Bigger is not better. It drives complexities and problems that Rudd hasn't even started fixing out of his 2020 Summit, let alone fueling the problem further with flood gate immigration. Look at the burden Obama is faced with! Why invite bigger problems?
Yes, small IS beautiful indeed!
Rudd does a lot of reading. He would be well advised to read British economist E. F. Schumacher's book 'Small Is Beautiful: Economics As If People Mattered' and consider the merits and application of the 'appropriate technologies' (AT) that require fewer resources, causes less impact on the environment and factors in consideration of the environmental, ethical, cultural, social and economical aspects of the community.
Rudd could learn from political scientist, Leopold Kohr [1909-94]:
"... there seems to be only one cause behind all forms of social misery: bigness. Oversimplified as this may seem, we shall find the idea more easily acceptable if we consider that bigness, or oversize, is really much more than just a social problem. It appears to be the one and only problem permeating all creation. Whenever something is wrong, something is too big." [The Breakdown of Nations, 1957]
Next there will be land developers selling sea-side real estate!
Fears for the health of the Coorong have been compounded because of falling water levels and increased salinity, the result of drought and overextraction of water in the Murray-Darling Basin.
A three-year study of the Coorong by the CSIRO found that it was, in effect, dead as an ecological community , but could be revived if new environmental flows of fresh water were flushed into the struggling wetlands. As salt levels rise and the river dries, tube worms have travelled upstream, building their homes on the native turtles – and just about anything else they can find.
Before white settlement the water flow had kept the Murray mouth open for about 7500 years – even in times of drought. The lakes were rarely salty, and the environment allowed turtles, brolgas, magpie geese and fish such as Murray cod and pygmy perch to flourish.
The Environment Minister, Peter Garrett, will have to decide whether to allow the flooding of the Coorong with seawater under national environmental laws next year. Environmentalists say the seawater plan would contravene principles of the Ramsar Convention, of which Australia was a founding signatory, because member countries are required to maintain the ecological values of a listed wetland. The sudden influx of salt water would be beyond the adaptive capacity of any species. This is an abysmal record of environmental destruction for an internationally recognised site!
The Murray Darling Basin remains the food basket of the nation, and a big earner of export dollars. Engineering is the dreaming story of so much of white settlement in Australia. Yet downstream, the narrative of gardens in the desert is, basically, over. In South Australia and western Victoria, fruit trees are dying, grape vines are being ploughed up and a whole constellation of towns are facing the fact that there may be no future for the industries that have supported them since before the First World War. Waters that were once clear that are now dangerous to the touch, fish that were once a staple food source that are now dangerous to eat, and a Coorong that is now saltier than the sea.
According to Water Minister Penny Wong: "We've made clear on many occasions that we believe the best thing for water reform is to ensure water can go to where it's most highly valued."
Australia's commercial asset - it's food Murray Darling Food Bowl - clearly cannot sustain the commercialism that we since Colonialism have imposed on it. We need to provide for our own people, not exports that suck our ecological systems dry!
Next there will be land developers selling sea-side real estate where the waterbirds and turtles used to wade!
Immigration up - house prices up - interest rates up
Immigration up - house prices up - interest rates up
It follows ...
House price surge lifts rate rise odds at http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,26293557-601,00.html
James Glynn | November 02, 2009 The Australian
Article from: Dow Jones Newswires
AUSTRALIAN house prices surged to record highs in the third quarter, likely stoking the case for interest rates to be raised sharply over coming months.
Rudd the Dudd
Boy, Rudd sure is a dud - in every respect. And a cruel and despotic one as well. It's like he is looking for opportunities to make himself mean and small, whilst always talking 'Big!'
Rudd wants to drop humane slaughter laws to please halal lobby
Please take a moment to read this as we must not let Rudd change this law about stunning the poor animals before they are slaughtered! They give up their lives so you can eat them and, with the Christmas season fast approaching, there is more slaughter of all animals - especially pigs, turkeys and chickens ... so please write to the websites below and also to Rudd and make your opinion count!
For the animals, please...
Please see article below regarding the non-stun slaughter of animals in Australia. Feel free to make a comment at the Farm Weekly website as below
http://fw.farmonline.com.au/news/nationalrural/livestock/news/mideast-princess-in-plea-to-rudd-on-halal-slaughter/1665104.aspx
or (or both)
http://www.watoday.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/inhumane-slaughter-puts-australias-reputation-at-risk-20091101-hrjw.html
Vicki
Editor: See also: Very significant gains made against live sheep-trade cruelty in Middle East
From hunter-gatherers to emerging pathogens
Clearly industrialisation has been the nutrient fertilising the human weed plume. Not only is the insatiable appetite to grow fat from the land, top order humans of the 'first' world have extended that insatiable urge to a growing dependence on materialism, credit, sugar, fat, babies and drugs as if addicted to the principle that more is good. It is beyond the norm. It is cultural extremism. Boom and bust is set to perpetuate with this greed mindset as if last recession was last generation's failure, the current generation knows best.
Big societies insatiably want exponentially more - taller, larger, faster! It's as if humans have become engorged ticks sucking blood from the Earth. Humans have exceeded ecological competence and top order predator status. With billions swarming across the globe humans have become the most invasive pathogen on the planet, invading and multiplying rapidly in not just suitable but unsuitable new habitats which they then convert to suitable, then want more.
To any non-human organism able to comprehend the scourge, this is a scary phenomenon. But the urge to breed is instinctive and encouraged.
Where's the mirror?
I remember
kangaroos ~ I remember when I was about 6 ~ now 57 ~ my dad and another left me in a slab hut whilst they mustered stock for the day ~ Shorthorns half way between Moree and Boggabilla ~ I remember the Roos they drove back for me to see during the mid afternoon ~ one mob, hundred's of them ~ mostly blues and reds ~ I remember the horizon mirage illusion amongst the dust ~ like heat waves over the plains ~ as they approached only a few willga and other sparce scrub scattered around ~ Roos flat out ~ I mean as fast as they go, a few emus too. Do any of you know the panic state a distressed Roo shows and the on guard hop mode they get in? Dad and Neville ~ Neville with his stock whip ~ up and down, I know now, the climax, the smile on my Dads face was getting the Roos together for me only ~ I was in the slab hut by myself, they did it for me. There's more ~ about the shearers stretcher I was left alone to sleep in ~ Well I remember them drinking out side with only the light of a fire ~ I knew gidgie ~ how do you spell it ~ sandle wood, oak, willga and I once new their smell ~ that is what I remember ~ and much much more. I remember. Years later I remember shooting Roos ~ many ~ today I am so sorry for them ~ where are they now ~ and mostly only little ones ~ flighty the shooters say ~ I feel sorry for them. I say. I do not believe the ABS ~ I do not believe the Cull is sustainable ~ I do believe we ~ you and me and our families need to let the law makers know ~ we want our wild life to survive the next ~ say 50 years ~ because I am sure if we are not silly enough to let our beautiful creatures die during say the next 50 years then our off spring ~ our children will be smart enough to look after the mob forever ~ Kangaroos like all creatures are unique and beautiful ~ trevor thompson ~I remember much much more than this.
foraging and industrial societies
I agree that gathering probably contributed the largest part of human diets, but that included crustaceans, molluscs - land and marine - arachnids and insects and birds' eggs. I have read that women's gathering contributed around 70% of hunter-gatherer diets.
Humans have only been engaged in agriculture for about 10,000 years since the last big ice age. During that time the most unequal societies evolved, with large populations and with the majority of people poorly fed. I don't think that we have adapted to this and it is likely to kill many of us off early in the 21st century.
We have entered, with the industrialisation of agriculture, a new era of high fat and simplified carbohydrate consumption. It is probably that diet that signals to some populations that there is plenty to spare, when in reality the fat and sugar is just about all there is to spare and it is not good stuff to store (all of it) as fat.
Food seems to be being used like a narcotic, and their high fat and sugar diet may be one of the things that keeps North Americans from revolting against their long working hours (especially compared to Europe) and poor returns on the personal energy they invest in their society, with so few having any real power or choice in important things.
The gardening societies of the polynesians and micronesians - and indeed all peoples living in clans and tribes after the ice-age - were probably ideal, with a variety of food sources divided up among families sharing the same territory. One of the most notable foods, of which the vast array of species was eradicated in the 20th century in the service of the false god of 'progress' and 'efficiency' was the giant taro. This plant was a staple of polynesia and micronesia. It grew in swamps and provided medications, fibre, and high-energy foods. Large and beautiful specimens would be kept for special occasions. The Japanese still grow taro. There have been attempts to grow and harvest taro on an industrial, massive basis, with the usual results of destroying the delicate societies they nourished and symbolised, reducing taros to a few species, and stuffing up the soils and water tables. Those societies typically also ate lots of fish and trapped or kept small terrestrial animals.
Naturally there were big variations between islander diets, according to what grew and survived on different islands, but there was a typical majority of islands.
For sure, big societies are not beautiful societies.
Sheila Newman, population sociologist
home page
Copyright to the author. Please contact sheila [AT] candobetter org or the editor if you wish to make substantial reproduction or republish.
We are more like foraging herbivores
Tigerquoll, you are correct about top order predators is a key to preserving biodiversity and forest ecosystems. Too many have been eradicated to protect livestock industries and people. However, "top order predators" cannot include humans as the rate of our expansion is far to heavy to support. Our "hunting and gathering" for bearers have been much more celebrated for their hunting, but the reality is that the gathering part was probably much more part of their diet. We are actually physiologically more foraging herbivores than carnivores, despite the hype and what our culture and conditioning tells us.
Economies developed from a culture of breeding, herding and eating animals. Civilisations meant captive domestic animals instead of a subsistence level of hunting. Livestock ownership became a currency.
Our nearest "cousins", Chimpanzees, are omnivores, but the amount of meat they eat is minimal compared to what most human societies eat. Chimps may eat up to 3% meat, but mostly fruits and nuts. Most people accept Darwin's theories, yet throw them out when it is convenient! The food pyramid should be turned upside down.
Custodial approach is most respectful
Vivienne,
I appreciate your insight. I support practices that strive for a humble ecological footprint and the feedback suggests traditional farming of cattle and sheep is an extravagant use of natural resources, so seeking ideas about less impacting alternatives has merit.
I prefer the custodial approach to the stewardship approach in how humans interact with the natural environment. Stewardship presupposes human domination over nature and prescribes responsible caretaker use of that power to treat nature responsibly. But since when have humans been held accountable?
Humans are top dog in nature and watchdog to the extent of ecological dictatorship. Carnivors have their place in nature, like tigerquolls, but human dominance of nature is far more that what quolls take to survive. Humans play god. Playing god is when humans step outside nature. Perhaps celebrating nature has a higher morality than celebrating a human fabricated deity.
The variant species of the quoll are a traditional top order natural predator across Australia's forests in perhaps an equivalent way as the gorilla or lion is a traditional top order predator in Africa. A predator's diet of meat should not shape the degree of respect to preserve their habitat - vegan or carnivore - let's not discriminate on nature's evolution.
Respect for the health and integrity of top order predators is key to preserving biodiversity and forest ecosystems. Much forest management is about trees and ignores the dependent fauna - including the current human myth of prescribed burning.
It is custodial responsibility that humans would be morally correct in pursuing as a philosophy to re-engaged with nature. "Custodial responsibility, sometimes called the principle of inter-generational equity, underpins both the intrinsic value and utlitarian cases for conservation."
I recommend reading: 'Practical Conservation Biology' by David Lindenmayer and Mark Burgman.'
Gorilla the mascot of World Vegan Day
Getting woodchipping Neanderthals to accept deep ecology is not like Christians accepting Muslims as they are, in some ways, on the par. It is more like trying to convince red-neck gun-slinging shooting carnivores to go vegan!
The idea of human dominance has been misconstrued. With the honour of responsibility and stewardship of Earth comes the onerous duty of caretaking and ultimate accountability. Nowhere does God, in any Creation story, give humans the right to destroy, kill and overpopulate or basically trash the planet. Neither is the right to conquer and destroy the natural world and other species. This is what is happening now.
The gorilla has been chosen to be the mascot for this year's World Vegan Day, 1st November These herbivores can weigh between 75 - 180 kilograms but are known to have upper body strength at least six times greater than that of humans. Event organisers were impressed by their strength and ability to live harmoniously with the natural world. Gorillas look fierce, but they are actually shy, friendly animals
In the 2007 Red List of Threatened Species, Western Lowland gorillas are now classified as Critically Endangered. Mountain gorillas are Endangered. Gorillas' main threat is people. They are hunted as food, are susceptible to human diseases and ironically their loss of habitat due to human conflict and habitat destruction.
Going vegan is about celebrating life, health, creative cooking and ethical choices. It is also about caring for Earth's creatures and encouraging a humble footprint on our planet. Deep Ecology and veganism are about harmony and peace, not dominance!
Preaching to the converted
Yep, read Arne Næss' eight principles of Deep Ecology. So how to persuade an eldest son of a champion woodchopper to appreciate and respect the existence values of a forest?
Answer that effectively and you are half way towards appreciating deep rooted 19th Century logging cultures like that still breeding strong in NW Tasmania with a one eyed view of the dollar value of old growth forests. Check these popular sites and appreciate the embedded culture you come up against:
Tasmanian Woodchopping Carnivals
Axeman's Complex (Tas)
Tasmania's Legendary Axeman David Foster
Deloraine Axemens Club Inc. (Tas)
..just back from Tasmania's north west, where one must have passed a few dozen B-double log trucks loaded with big native tree logs, plus three busy saw mills.
It's almost like getting Christians to accept Muslims.
Deep Ecology
Deep Ecology is the belief that the world does not exist purely as a resource for man's benefit. The world exists for its own sake. We are a part of this wonderful and diverse creation but we do not own it. Our culture tells us that the way we are living is the best that human beings have ever had. It is the best that we could hope for. The world was made for man and our destiny is to conquer and rule it.
Our cultural ecology sees human beings as separate from and superior to the rest of nature. We believe that all of creation exists for man's benefit.
Deep Ecology advocates a change in culture to one where we see human beings as equal partners in the community of life but not the owners.
Our culture with its sneering sense of superiority thinks that is the best way of life humans have ever lived. Our culture detests the way of life of so called "savages." We patronise developing nations and impose our values onto them, then urbanisation and industrialisation is promoted as an ideal, a way to emulate.
Tribal cultures were sustainable because their vision meant they did not devour the world. They did not see the world as theirs so they did not turn the world all into human food. www.deep-ecology-hub.com
Colonialism destroyed tribal societies, and imposed the evils "civilization" onto them.
Rudd has no mandate to exceed Australia's carrying capacity
The Rudd government has no mandate to exceed Australia's carrying capacity.
* Labor had no electoral platform on population growth going into the 2007 federal election
* There is no Labor policy on immigration or population growth
* There have been no federal bills passed to perpetuate/accelerate immigration numbers - have there?
* There has been no national debate on immigration and population growth
* The ALP National Platform and Constitution 2009 [http://www.alp.org.au/platform/index.php] makes no mention of population policy or immigration, as listed in chapter headings below.
•Chapter 1 - Governing for Australia's long-term future
•Chapter 2 - Securing our future with responsible economic management
•Chapter 3 - Building a 21st century economy
•Chapter 4 - Delivering fairness for working families
•Chapter 5 - An Education Revolution for Australia's future
•Chapter 6 - Preparing Australia for the health needs of the future
•Chapter 7 - Securing an inclusive future for all Australians
•Chapter 8 - Strengthening regional and local communities
•Chapter 9 - Tackling climate change and our environmental challenges
•Chapter 10 - Strengthening Australia in a changing world
•Chapter 11 - New ways of governing for a stronger democracy
...population ? immigration? ... no mention
So the logical conclusion is that Kevin Rudd himself must have a personal agenda driving the immigration explosion out of some personal pet desire and in doing so is abusing his powerful privileged position as Prime Minister of Australia. May be Rudd has convinced himself that since Australia has a history of immigration and has done arguably well from it, so more must be better.
The problem with this approach is that Rudd has no measurement in place to assess the economic, social and environmental impacts of each additional 100,000 immigrants walking through airline international arrival gates. Thee impacts are being felt not at federal level but at state level in NSW, VIC, QLD, WA and even Tasmania. State budgets are not coping and can't fund vital infrastructure - housing, transport, health, education, public services.
Public services are being diluted and quality of life is being downgraded. Australians' fundamental right to preserve Australian values and way of life is being squandered on one man's personal fettish. Australia's way of life is not that of congested countries like Hong Kong, yet Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane are increasingly adopting a Hong Kong look and feel.
Rudd has no clear sense of what population size is optimal. What is the carrying capaity of Australia? When is enough enough? Well when cities run out of water this is a natural sign that capacity has been reached. Cities that have or have started planning for high energy sucking desalination plants are surely exceeding their capacity. On this basis Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth are at capacity. They need stomach stapling so to speak.
May be Rudd has convinced himself that Australia should be a big boy like those of the countries he is mixing with on his international travels. This is the 'bigger must be better' philosophy. Since when? Rudd's head space must be in the clouds, blissfully ignorant of how his simple ignorant policy of encouraging mass immigration is having on ordinary Australians.
Immigration and climate change
Dear Vivienne,
Thanks for taking the time to speak out on this issue of ever increasing importance. It's well past time we had a full, intelligent and informed public debate about this issue. Australians have been too long been disenfranchised about this issue - we need to speak out now clearly and intelligently and make our leaders listen! After an election where he carefully avoided mentioning immigration Rudd has imposed record immigration levels upon us without our consent. He suddenly came out the other night and said he believes in a big Australia - well why didn't he tell us before the election instead of treating us like children. Of course the debate is about numbers and not about 'types' of people - the word 'racism' has no proper place here- regards Peter
US double standards on Iranian nulcear program
Subject was: "politically incorrect" - JS
SMH ignores US double standard
The following letter is in response to a Sydney Morning Herald editorial. It was sent to that paper but not published. -
Your editorial, "Iran's radioactive reasoning" (September 29) failed- to mention the exposed double standard the US is using about to nuclear weapons in the Middle East.
While the US is turning a blind eye on the grave danger Israel's nuclear weapons represent to world peace and security, it applies harsh pressure on Iran and other countries to prevent it from possessing nuclear technology.
The only country that is defying international law, hundreds of UN resolutions, launching wars and oppressing and occupying other people's territories in the Middle East is Israel and not Iran.
Why does the US not also demand that Israel allow, within weeks, unlimited access to the secret plants and sign the Non Proliferation Treaty as Iran and all Arab countries have done?
The danger of Israel's nuclear weapons and the double standards is that it will push Iran and other countries in the future to possess deterrent nuclear weapons.
Ali Kazak, former ambassador of Palestine
Our numbers will double in 36 years!
The "parasitic elites" are trying to make us accept a 35 million figure for 2050. However, this will inevitably blow out, just like Melbourne's growth zone has done already, and Australia's population growth has surpassed projections. Unless our immigration rate is drastically slowed down, our numbers will double in 36 years! In this case, we will be much closer to 50 million by 2050. We humans have an evolutionary flaw in our failure to comprehend exponential growth. Water allocated to the red gum wetlands along the Murray had to be cut due to the needs of consumers. Additional population growth will eat away at our remaining forests and waterways in the quest for "jobs" and "economic benefits", and our land will be a dry, hot and sterile desert. Of course as long as our GDP is growing, the wealthy elites will be able to find sanctuary in their private acreages and ivory towers while the rest struggle against the tide global tides of shortages and poverty.
Australia won't be able to help feed the hungry world!
Former World Bank economist and Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture executive director Marco Ferroni told the Rural Press Club of Victoria it was sub-Saharan Africa and southern Asia that needed to increase production to feed the world. Australia, the US and Argentina won't be able to feed the world. Mr Ferroni said the developed world had become complacent about food security in the past 30 years.
Also, Department of Primary Industries chief scientist Graham Mitchell told guests at Grains Innovation Park's 40th birthday celebrations in Horsham Victoria last week that the arithmetic of to feed a growing population with less land and less water is one of the biggest issues facing scientists around the world "causes sleepless nights".
"We need to double the amount of food by 2050 with a quarter less land - and the gorilla in the room is overpopulation, " Dr Mitchell said.
Dr Mitchell said the past 50 years of Australian agriculture had been relatively stable, but a tsunami of instability and change was predicted.
We have governments and economist aiming to increase our population to stimulate the economy, but all the signs point to the reality that with environmental threats and food shortage looming, we are likely to have problems feeding the population we have, and export overseas.
Why don't governments and economists listen to scientists? Our safe future depends on it. It is not one gorilla in the room, but a jungle full of them (despite the fact that they are being pushed off the planet) but still they don't hear the warnings of impending perils to our survival.
Incessant mass immigration a variant of the Shock Doctrine
A very necessary and timely article.
I think we should regard mass immigration as a variant of the of other tools of disaster capitalism, referred to in Naomi Klein's towering "The Shock Doctrine" of 2007 (even though Klein, unfortunately, adopts an implicit politically correct pro-immigration stance, as discussed in Sheila's article here.
How to overcome the disorganisation caused by the incessant waves of immigration that Howard imposed on us and Rudd continues to impose upon us, will prove to be a difficult, but not altogether insurmountable challenge. This article will be a very good start to a discussion on how to meet that challenge.
Union takes stand against shooters party & NSW Gov
"Union orders rangers to defy hunting in parks
LOUISE HALL
26/10/2009 6:28:00 AM
UNION bosses have pledged to fight any deal the Rees Government negotiates with the Shooters' Party that would allow the hunting of feral animals in national parks.
The Public Service Association, which represents park rangers, has ordered its members not to assist in establishing recreational hunting in national parks in NSW.
The association's general secretary, John Cahill, says without the support of park rangers, a plan to introduce regulated hunting under the supervision of NSW National Parks would likely fail.
He called on uniformed rangers and other union members to attend a rally organised by the Greens tomorrow outside Parliament House.
The Shooters' Party, which holds the balance of power in the Legislative Council, says the bill will allow licensed gun owners the opportunity to play a more active role in conservation hunting programs in public lands. (...)"
More here:http://theland.farmonline.com.au/news/state/agribusiness-and-general/general/union-orders-rangers-to-defy-hunting-in-parks/1658804.aspx?src=enews
'Growth' pushers well understand the harm they cause
Some good points have been made here and above, but I think they fall into the trap of crediting the growth pushers with far less nefarious motives than they deserve to be.
That population growth could possibly be good is self-evidently ridiculous.
Once, decades ago, before Australia reached its population size, maybe.
And just maybe, theoretically, in the future, if we can somehow fix up the land, our forests and our waterways, take proper care of all our endangered fauna and flora and all agree to live in a far less materially profligate fashion, we may be able to squeeze a few more millions into our now largely barren and dry continent.
But, today, amidst the ecological crises and crises of resource scarctiy, on top of the chaos and waste caused by extreme laissez faire free market capitalism, it is insane from the point of view of our society as a whole, and these economists who pretend otherwise are lying through their teeth.
They are lying on behalf of a cynical parasitic elite amongst us, who have calculated that by trashing our environment with more people and making us all, on average, necessarily poorer and by wasting enormous resources coping with the diseconomies of scale you refer to, they can profit at an even further cost to the rest of us.
All the economic activity of the population-growth-pushing sector adds nothing to the overall wealth of this nation[1] but takes a good deal away.
The people pushing population growth are the moral equivalent of those who would burn a house to the ground in order to destroy any possible evidence linking them to the burglary of that house.
The only thing more stupid than 'growing' an economy through population growth is 'growing' and economy through war.
For further information, please read "How the growth lobby threatens Australia's future" of 24 Jan 09.
Footnotes
1. Arguably, wealth brought in by immigrating overseas elites, and to a smaller degree, some of those with skills trained by other, often poorer societies, could be considered in some sensed as exceptions to this as it would add to the overall wealth of this nation, but at the expense of the overall wealth of the nation from which they come. Of course almost none of this wealth would end up in the hands of ordinary Australians.
Economystic population growth delusions
Economists who think that exponential population growth is "good" is because it improves the economy by increasing the number of consumers.
To quote American anti-immigration writer Lawrence Auster:
"The prevailing view of immigration among mainstream elites is that it represents a great boon to the economy. That immigration is only to be considered from the standpoint of its economic effects has become such an accepted notion over the past 25 years that it has not occurred to many people what a bizarre idea it really is. The implication is that our well-being as a society is solely a function of economic output. Matters of quality of life, social cohesion and continuity, aesthetic enjoyment, political liberty, national identity, and all the other intangibles that make up the life of a society—since these cannot be stated statistically, they don’t count. Or so the economists seem to believe. The late Julian Simon, with his crack-pated idea that every immigrant, regardless of his cultural origin, level of education, or legal status, represents a net economic gain for this country, was perhaps the most extreme of these “economystics.”
Notwithstanding the veneer of scientific expertise with which its claims are advanced, the economystic faith boils down to an almost vacuous proposition: immigration is good because it increases population, and thus (assuming more economic output from more people) proportionately increases gross product. A doubling or tripling of the U.S. population will lead to a doubling or tripling of economic output. Voilà—immigration makes us a “wealthier” nation! One of the problems with this logic is that individual wealth does not necessarily increase, only the aggregate wealth. Meanwhile, our congested coastal and metropolitan areas have become two or three times more crowded. Pressure on open spaces and parks, stress on resources (increasing the need for burdensome regulations), crippling traffic congestion, displacement of older residents, as well as ethnic conflict, all become worse. Even as economic output goes up, overall quality of life can decline. But the economystic cannot see these things because for him the only reality is that which can be stated in economic terms.
For the economystic, the swelling of Los Angeles due to immigration has been a wonderful thing. According to the Los Angeles Times, “Development policies over the last decade have sought to make the Los Angeles area the magnet of the burgeoning Pacific Rim economy. The region’s growth has been phenomenal, as measured by trade revenues, number of building permits issued and aggregate income.” Sounds great, right? But the article continued: “The success of Los Angeles’ integration into the international economy, however, is not matched by success in integrating its immigrant and ethnic minority populations.” The article then discussed the uncontrolled ethnic rivalry and violence in this new “world-class” city of Los Angeles.(5)
In other words, the great economic growth of Los Angeles has not necessarily been a boon for the people living there. By most standards, Los Angeles over the last 30 years has become an immeasurably worse place to live in as a direct result of the very things that have led to the growth of its aggregate wealth. The economystic cannot see this. He looks at a table of statistics, notices the upward trend in population and aggregate income, and rushes into print telling us how immigration is turning America into an earthly paradise."
Source
Australia the "lucky country" is fading into history!
THE OECD and the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation have just released their combined annual agricultural outlook. It suggests that with one billion undernourished people in the world already, food availability must increase by 60 per cent in the next 20 years to overcome this shortage. Food prices will continue to rise, and the growing demand for biofuel is another factor that will impact on food production.
With less arable land and global population continuing to grow, increasing food production by 60 per cent in 20 years is going to be a phenomenal challenge and maybe impossible!
We can't just keep destroying oceans, rivers, forests and biodiversity and expect resources to just keep expanding!
Australia, as a leading developed country, needs to show some initiative in dealing with humanity’s challenges. However, both our political parties are committed to growth and greed!
Rarely do politicians listen to climate scientists, nor will the atmosphere cooperate with governments trying to obtain a balance between addressing climate change, the demand for jobs, threats to food production, water shortages and securing votes! Climate change is caused by over-population of people and their unrealistic demands on natural resources and energy.
Before being elected, Kevin Rudd stated that climate change was the greatest moral challenge of all time. Continuing to add people to Australia is his way of boosting his political power and with more impoverished, desperate and dis- empowered people their business sponsors will have an endless resource of unemployed and underemployed to exploit. State leaders willingly cooperate as they receive more taxes and revenues. We will find more people living in third-world conditions while the power monopolies accumulate wealth. Australia as the "lucky country" is fading into history!
Economists and mad men!
Economists who think that exponential population growth is "good" is because it improves the economy by increasing the number of consumers. Australia is a land of immigrants and this policy of welcoming people as residents has helped bring us prosperity and cultural diversity. However, more of a good thing is not necessarily better! Medicine is good, but taking more than prescribed is NOT better. Economist and demographers who apply rules without basic biological understandings of ecological communities are living in a vacuum. Growth cannot continue forever, and if we tip over sustainability the benefits will turn to detriments and destroy the building blocks that sustain life. All economists should have a basic understandings of biology and ecology, the "web of life" without which we could not live on planet Earth!
Kenneth Boulder's Dismal Theorems
Kenneth Ewart Boulding (January 18, 1910 – March 18, 1993) was an economist, educator, peace activist, poet, religious mystic, devoted Quaker, systems scientist, and interdisciplinary philosopher.
He said: "Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist."
First Theorem: "The Dismal Theorem"
If the only ultimate check on the growth of population is misery, then the population will grow until it is miserable enough to stop its growth.
Second Theorem: "The Utterly Dismal Theorem"
Any technical improvement can only relieve misery for a while, for so long as misery is the only check on population, the improvement will enable population to grow, and will soon enable more people to live in misery than before.
Third Theorem: "The moderately cheerful form of the Dismal Theorem"
Fortunately, it is not too difficult to restate the Dismal Theorem in a moderately cheerful form: if something else, other then misery and starvation, can be found which will keep a prosperous population in check, the population does not have to grow until it is miserable and starves, and it can be stably prosperous.
At least kangaroos are able to regulate their own reproduction and control their own fertility.
Politicians like Kevin Rudd lack the will to view population growth as something to be avoided due to the monetary benefits of taxes and mass markets. Population growth doesn't solve problems, but rather invites even more growth. We are selfishly creating larger impacts for future generations to cope with. As relatively new-comers to Australia, we haven't learnt much from the original inhabitants!
Kevin Rudd: the greatest social threat to Australia for our time
If one was to analyse the on ground impacts to Australia since Rudd came to power, and ignore the puffery like the 2020 talkfest or public Sorry statement, Rudd's personal secret agenda for Australia is disturbing and irreversibly changing Australia's social make up and undermining our core values. The Rudd Record to date is:
* Record immigration
* Record overseas flights playing foreign minister and Obama patsy
* No action on climate change or environment
* Massive spending on carbon accelerating militarisation
* No action improving indigenous rights, self-determination and health - instead of saying sorry, Rudd should have been frank with his intent and said 'stuff ya'
* No action on long term infrastructure investment
* Billions on bailing out greedy banks and dodgy investments
* No action on anything from Rudd's 2020 summit circus
Rudd's undisclosed personal agenda is driving federal Labor without question because they are turning a blind eye based on Rudd's electoral mandate and popular polling. Rudd is pursuing a personal mission of power abuse to hget his way. Rudd has outstepped his democratic mandate. Local and state governments are reeling and yet to intimidated to challenge Rudd.
Rudd has become Australia's greatest sovereignty threat equivalent to the historically proven misguided level of Britain's Neville Chamberlain. As Chamberlain naively pronounced to the British people on 30 September 1938 from his false reading of the Munich Agreement:
"My good friends, for the second time in our history, a British Prime Minister has returned from Germany bringing peace with honour. I believe it is peace for our time... Go home and get a nice quiet sleep."
Copenhagen for Rudd looks set to become the Australian electorate's awakening of Rudd's concept of 'peace for our time'.
Robert Burns: How Scotland's elites betrayed their people
The following is from an article, "'A Parcel of Rogues' Musical Interlude" on the blog Mild Colonial Boy, which includes an excerpt from this article.
The Corries — Such a Parcel Of Rogues in the Nation
The Corries sing a poem of Robert Burns written in 1791 to protest the Acts of Union 1707. Some Scots, such as Robert Burns, saw it as an act of betrayal by a traitorous Political Elite handing over Scotland to alien masters.
Some Readers may see parallels to the Australia of today with it’s Political Elites’ handing Australia over to the whims of foreigners through the bipartisan policies of high Immigration and Multiculturalism at the expense of traditional Australia.
Such a Parcel Of Rogues in the Nation
by Robert Burns
Fareweel to a’ our Scottish fame,
Fareweel our ancient glory!
Fareweel ev’n to the Scottish name.
Sae famed in martial story!
Now Sark rins over Salway sands,
An’ Tweed rins to the ocean,
To mark where England’s province stands --
Such a parcel of rogues in a nation!
What force or guile could not subdue
Thro’ many warlike ages
Is wrought now by a coward few
For hireling traitor’s wages.
The English steel we could disdain,
Secure in valour’s station;
But English gold has been our bane --
Such a parcel of rogues in a nation!
O, would, or I had seen the day
That Treason thus could sell us,
My auld grey head had lien in clay
Wi’ Bruce and loyal Wallace!
But pith and power, till my last hour
I’ll mak this declaration :-
‘We’re bought and sold for English gold’--
Such a parcel of rogues in a nation!
Boat voyage $3000 cheaper than Immigration agents
In Bill Hoffman's article, "Boat people not the issue", he mentions the $15,000 per head paid by the Tamils to get on the boat for Australia, I think this is the same number that has been quoted widely in the media.
In the article from The Australian, it says immigration agents have been asking for up to $18,000 to create a fictitious loan as evidence that student visa applicants from the subcontinent had the means to study in Australia. Looks like there is a an easier and quiter way of making it to our shores than a rickety boat. There is no mention in the article of how many student visa applicants slipped through the net using this fraud.
Bogus loans used in student visa scam
Guy Healy, Higher education writer | October 24, 2009
Article from: The Australian
FALSIFIED Indian bank and loan statements are being used to underwrite a people-smuggling operation centred on student visas, forcing the cancellation of at least 500 applications from Indian nationals....
Kevin Rudd needs a "big" nation for his ego?
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd last week defended his belief in a "big Australia" - ''I think it's good for us, it's good for national security long term, it's good in terms of what we can sustain as a nation".
At our present rate of population growth, we will have closer to 50 million by 2050, not 35 million!
Further cramming more people into our already congested cities, and further demands on our already natural resources, is not "good for us" or for the "working families" we often hear concern for. The only thing "good" about an overpopulated Australia will be for the benefit of Kevin Rudd and his elite business supporters!
As for national security, more people means more cannon fodder for defense like the Bush regime lured Latinos to USA with promises of financial security and citizenship.
What "sustains" our nation is our biodiversity and the web of life, Australia's ecological systems. Already we have lack of water, pollution, overfishing, loss of indigenous species, ruin of Ramsar wetlands , threats to the Great Barrier Reef, and a massive oil spill in the Timor Sea etc. The demands for jobs and economic benefits will eat away and pollute existing natural life-supporting features and Australia will be a hot and sterile dust bowl.
This megalomaniac wants to be a ruler over a "big" nation - and its all about a little man with ego needs! This seemingly mind-mannered, bookish, spiritual man has some serious personality/self-esteem issues and if he needs a "big"nation he should see a psychiatrist!
Rees supporting Mad Max 4 - says it all!
Petrol head Nathan Rees was behind the Repco Rally and sorted political legislation to make it happen, same with V8 Supercars ripping through Homebush. So somehow I expected to see him supporting the forth Mad Max film being announced today for New South Wales. The original Mad Max was screened back in 1979.
As Rees sees it - simple - more jobs for mechanics, spray painters nd tourism - jobs, jobs, jobs. But film making is a one off. So like mining companies than come and go sacking workers as hey move on so will this film. Boom and bust mentality perpetuates like the 19th Century gold rush.
Now there digging up the 1970s for a remake. It's like Bowie's Life on Mars remastered. But I wish "Fury Road" every success for Australia's struggling film industry, although can't we find a new subject? How about a file called 'Franklin' with Australia's best actors and emerging actors retelling the iconic environmental and social battle of Australia's recent history? It would be new, fresh and topical.
Anyway, may be Mel s Max 4 may wish to do a Silvester Stalone come back. The NSW Film & Television Office is now part of Rees mega department Industry & Investment NSW. It all sounds energetic, but can someone name just one project out of it that is fully funded, approved and underway with a 5 year life or longer let alone beyond the NSW election cycle.
Nathan relishes any business announcement especially one that involves cars. Pity Bridgestone has suddenly announced closing up shop in South Australia with no thought to redeploying its 600 Australian employees.
Executive director of the Australian Institute for Social Research, Associate Professor John Spoehr, says ""We know from the past that around about one-third of manufacturing workers that lose their jobs during downturns go on to be long-term unemployed."
[SOURCE: http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/10/24/2723176.htm]
The writing is on the wall for the automotive industry in Australia, but some petrol heads just can't give up the addiction and keep tuning into Top Gear 'to keep the dream alive'.
Rees says 'keep it simple stupid'! Well simple ideas for simple minds as other say. NSW has become the meat head state! May be I should change my number plate.
Rudd Gates - a pet project of Kevin Rudd without mandate
I agree with quarkasylum's article above.
The less than 1% of total immigrants to Australia from the desperate refugees fleeing persecution from Sri Lanka pales in terms of the real immigration pressures impacting at airports at Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.
Sydney's international arrivals terminal has become the start and driver of most social and public infrastructure pressures imposed on Australia. Yet Rudd blissfully ignores this direct immigration pressure on society and in his high minded state, self-justifies population increase as performing some out of touch noble international missionary duty.
Any criticism is branded with propagandic racism slur.
It is blantant exploitation of a politician's pet project fettih once handed too much power. Rudd is guilty.
Currently the most moral international duty for Australia should be to stand up for the oppressed minorities in our region (not the US instigated mess of Iraq and Afghanistan) but Australia's immediate dependent neighbours of East Timor, West Papuans, Soloman Islanders, indigenous Fijians, indigenous Vanuatans and the persecuted Tamils of Sri Lanka.
Where is the Rudd government's public criticism of the Sinhalese Sri Lankan genocide of its ethic Tamils?
The Rudd government's undisclosed accelerating record of legal immigration through our key international airport hubs has no electoral mandate - but yet our naive media feed on the oppressed and desperate 1% and are almost incitng racism in their fettish for scandal.
Rudd accepted government with no mandate to promise to immigrant lobby groups to ramp up immigration when he got to power. Remember Maxine McKew displaced Howard in his own electorate back in the 2007 federal election largely because she appealed to the Chinese vote of that electorate.
Perhaps a 4 Corners investigation is warranted into Labor deals done to rid PM Howard of a long held safe Liberal seat?
The Australian federal government website has no information on the Rudd Government's immigration policy. Seems Rudd's Mein Kamf has being withheld - another ambitious politician who once tastes power is too tempted to live out personal pet programmes like the kings of old who could order wishes at whim.
Check http://www.australia.gov.au/topics/immigration
The logical conclusion with this state of affairs is that Rudd is using and abusing his grasp of power and influence to pursue his personal pet desire to massively increase Australia's population with overseas immigrants.
Problem is that he hasn't presented a policy and allowed for public discussion and approval. His government has let the resultant presures of hsi mass influx burden and stress Australia's major capital cities Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane with flow on effects on the smaller major cities. Darwin and Tasmania have ever before experiences such pressures on rent and housing affordability. This is a litmus test showing that Australia isn’t coping with Rudd's undisclosed personal fettish to maximise immigration.
Rudd's pompous fluff about making "no apology" for illegal immigration is a bit rich. Illegals make up less that 1% of immigration, so Rudd' tough stance is on the periphery. Clearly this is to distract from his real fettish - maximising legal immigration.
Rudd is the key driver of the demise of Australia's way of life as we had it before these mass population pressures. Housing is in short supply, transport infrastructure is inadequate, hospitals can't cope - all public infrastructure in Victora, NSW and Queensland are not coping with the federal population explosion policy. But these three Labor state governments remain compliant, complicit and silent about the demand side of the public service and infrastructure problem as if Rudd has them by the short and curlies.
Rees, Brumby and Bligh lack leadership to stand up to Rudd for the economic, social and environmental degradation he inflicting on their constituents
Rudd seems to have a Chinese embracing vision for Australia. But his already mass immigration legacy will burden and culturally change Australia for generations. Question is has Rudd's pet projects been thought through and put to demographic experts or does Rudd consider himself judge, jury and executioner in the same vane as Henry VIII? Rudd's electoral promises, his 2020 Summit promises and his sorry statement to Aborigines have now proven hollow rhetoric. Rudd is capitalising on the lack of alternative political leadership in Australia on the other sideof the chamber.
Rudd's political winfall of power has gone to his head. Rudd has become dangerous for Australia to the extent that his pet projects will blind him to real on ground issues. But on ground pressures are only going to get a whole lot worse, yet no-one in Australian politics seems able to come within a bull's roar of seriously challenging Rudd's arrogance for his pet projects.
Murdoch, Privatisation and the Wheat Board scandal
Hi James,
Well, what you say about the Wheatboard scandal reminds me of another thing that the Murdoch press favour - privatisation - and its role in placing the Wheatboard beyond the control of government and the courts. (I am not sure what role this may or may not have played in the AWB scandal - do you know?)
Here is the article:
Justice Michael Kirby on
Why Privatisation is wrong (reproduced below)
The Hon Justice Michael Kirby AC CMG*, went to the trouble in 2006 to warn1 Australians about the dangers of privatization removing important government functions to a position beyond the laws made to administer them fairly.
He said “The ‘commercialisation’ of the public sector means that isolating the activities and decisions of government from those of the private sector is becoming a more complicated, and sometimes, seemingly, an impossible exercise.”(p.3)
“The exercise of public power is fundamentally different in character to the making of a decision in a purely private context. Decisions are then being made on behalf of the people, typically involving the use of money raised from, and power derived from, the people. Higher standards of accountability and responsibility are therefore attached to the decisionmaker. Public power imports public accountability, including before the courts.” (p.4)
“This reduction in accountability is a result of removing control over day-to-day actions and decisions from the relevant Minister and government departments to private sector bodies whose ultimate legal responsibility is to their shareholders, rather than to the public interest more generally.” (p.6)
He goes on to describe the outcome of a series of cases involving the High Court where the law encountered problems in getting public accountability. This problem arose in NEAT Domestic Trading Pty Ltd v AWB Ltd (2003) 216 CLR 277. It involved officials of the Wheat Board who had refused six applications from another trader(NEAT) to export bulk wheat. The AWB had acquired through its creation by government, the power to prevent by veto bulk wheat exports from Australia. It could do this by withholding approval. The power to approve or veto exports normally belongs to a government body because it is a legal power. As such it is normally reviewable and controllable through the courts. That is, the judicial representatives of “we the public” can ensure that Australian trade is conducted fairly.
The outcome of this case was that Australians had lost the power to control the nation’s wheat exports by giving that power to this private body.
Because of this case, and others, it seems very wrong for Mr Carr, Mr Keating, the Murdoch Press and the many others we hear of to be urging Mr Iemma to privatize electricity against the will of the bulk of the NSW electorate and the NSW Labor Party.
The government has given up a great deal of control to corporations in the area of banking (through deregulation) and the banks have become too strong to effectively control. There seems every reason for Australians to disbelieve reassurances that all will be well with the corporatisation and privatization of electricity, water, ports and municipal government functions and assets.
Privatisation means transferring the powers conferred by ownership of an influential or vital asset or trade from elected government to private individuals. The only reason government gained control of them in the first place was because communities gave them that control. The communities did not ever give them the power to transfer those assets and resources. This power has been achieved without real consent. In the case of our electricity, water and savings, this means that we are (involuntarily) giving up control over resources and assets upon which our comfort and ultimately our lives depend.
Peoples form governments to protect them from this kind of situation yet our State and Federal governments are gradually removing the protections they were created to provide.
This is a bad thing and Australians have reason for grave concern.
Justice Kirby concluded, “It is no good Australia preaching good governance of other lands if it neglects the issue at home.
“I commend a reflection upon these aspects of governance to all participants in this conference concerned with the basic parameters of accountability in the deployment of public power. Public power and the use of public funds beget the need for public accountability. We should never forget or neglect this basic rule.” (p.14)
But most Australians have either forgotten or given up on this simple rule.
The speech referred to was by Justice Kirby, in the University of Canberra, Corporate Governnace ARC Research Project, Corporate Governance in the Public Sector Dinner, High Court of Australia, Canberra, 9 March 2006. The speech is downloadable from here as 53K pdf file.
Sheila Newman, population sociologist
home page
Why Murdoch still prefers the Liberal Party
Great article, Sheila.
You wrote:
Clearly the Murdoch Press is pleased with Kevin Rudd's performance to date and they don't regret the departure of Howard, although they know that some of their readers still do.
My own view is that the Murdoch press would have preferred that Howard win the 2007 election. Of course, they make much of their editiorials immediately prior to the election (Thursday in the Courier Mail as I recollect), after much ostensible weighing up of the relative merits of the two supposedly 'worthy candidates', calling for a vote for Mr. Rudd
Clearly, to maintain their value as propaganda organs, the Australian the Courier-Mail and other Murdoch papers have to, on occasions, tell the truth and appear to take the side of the people.
They did the latter prior to the 2007 elections.
If they had not, and had overtly supported, yet again, the lying, incompetent, and malevolent Howard Government, their ability to subsequenlty fool public opinion and to corral the Rudd Government into accepting its agenda would have been far more limited.
It seems more than likely than not that they judged that they could not save Howard's miserable hide, yet again, in 2007. In fact, to me, it seems more likely that overt support for Howard by the Murdoch Press in the 2007 elections may actually have worked against him.
So, instead they hedged their bets.
In fact, given the mountain of scandals against the Howard Government, the Murdoch press was indeed heavily biased in favour of Howard Government. As one of many examples I could give: remember the AWB scandal, in which the Howard Governmnt allowed AU$296 of bribe money to be paid to the same regime of Saddam Hussein that, in 2003, it insisted was such a mortal threat to world peace, that we were left with no choice but to immediately invade Iraq then and there? Like most Australians, I believe that Howard and Downer knew precisely what was going on all along and, therefore, belong behind bars. However the Australian, feigning astonishing gullibility, insisted that it was all the fault of the AWB bosses and that Howard and Downer had truly been kept in the dark.
Even if the Australian could possibly have accepted such a tall story, at the very least it owed to its readers to remind them, and repeatedly remind them, until election day that it was unfit to hold office. Given its role in bringing about the early election that resulted in the removal of the Whitlam Government in 1975 for alleged incompetence of a far smaller magnitude, why didn't it demand new elections then and there?
The fact that the Howard Government ever stood a chance of being re-elected after the essential truth of the AWB scandal became known is an indication of the media's, and in particular, the Murdoch media's, blatant bias in favour of John Howard that continued right up to election day in 2007. (Some may be interested in a post I wrote arguing essentially the same on an Online Opinion disscussion forum in response to the article "Judging Howard" by Chris Lewis of 7 Sep 09.)
The fact that the Australian's strategy of hedging its bets now seems to have paid off shouldn't therefore be taken as proof that they prefer Labor over the Coalition. However rotten Federal Labor in Government may be, it still appears to be subject to more constraints from their grass roots membership and trade union base, from behaving like the tyrannical feudal despots that the Coalition in Government has shown itself to be.
So, even though a Federal Labor Government may not be ideal for Murdoch, it's a damn good consolation prize.
Given a few more months of Federal Labor incompetence and trampling on its own support base, having them thrown out and replaced by the more trusty Coalition Federal Government should not pose an inordinately difficult challenge to the Murdoch Press, that is unless, we remain vigilant against it.
It's important that we do what we can to prevent the Murdoch Press orchestrating political events to suit its own agenda as it has many times in the past. However much we rightly feel revulsion at the Rudd Government we should not allow ourselves to automatically fall into line behind any future demands by the Mrudoch press for its removal.
Of course, what has to be done is to build a viable political alternative to both the Coalition and Labor. The Greens still appear, in spite of havinn almost countless opportunities handed to them on platters in recent decades, incapable of becoming that alternative. So it seems that that alternative will have to come from elsewhere.
Foreign Aid fallacies
The Aid Agencies all function on two fallacious beliefs:
1. That industrialisation is progress and will cure all ills
2. That overpopulation is normal for the third world and can be cured by industrialisation in an ideology known as 'the demographic transition', which has so often been shown to be fallacious that you wonder that the AID people and the politicians who so often quote it, continue
AID agencies, and particularly the UN, avoid looking at the theft of land by colonials and big business and justify the failure to return land with the 'industrialisation cures all ills' ideology, thus allowing corporations to buy it all up, and allowing new colonisation by China and India, for instance, in Africa.
There are a number of amazing books about Foreign Aid Agencies which would put you off giving them chewing-gum off your shoe. So many are busy in there providing cover (whether they know it or not) for foreign warmongers who want to make trouble in adjacent countries with various minerals or oil.
Somalia is a very good example of all of these things. A book now out of print is Michael Marin, The Road to Hell: The Ravaging Effects of Foreign Aid and International Charity,
The book is all about Western intervention in Somalia, plus Marin's investigation of a number of well-known aid organisations, notably some of the ones that get people to sponsor a child - CARE and Save the Children, notably.
He shows how Somalia, once self-sufficient due to herding and nomadic lifestyles on marginal lands, overpopulated and destroyed those previously well-maintained lands, due to the provision of wells for permanent populations and other really arrogant and stupid 'progressive' agricultural innovations - none of them necessary at all - merely dictated by the ideology of 'progress'.
(See also the "Kalahari fires" article on this site which is a study of traditional nomadic lifestyles on marginal land.)
Somalian politicians (the modern variety) - not the ordinary people - abused the aid system by setting up pseudo refugee camps among other things, but the aid system had done the damage and set in train the overpopulation.
Maren argues that the aid business is driven by the grain merchants, to guarantee income for grain that might otherwise not find buyers in any year. The objective is to sell the grain, not to help people, some of who do not need or want that help in any particular year.
Maren says that journalists are uncritical of the aid agencies because they rely on them, presumably for stories and safe passage.
Maren's is not the only book I have read on the subject, but it is the one I most recently read, albeit now out of print.
If you go to internet sites about Africa, Somalia etc you will be able to put together the same stories, especially from independent local writers.
All in all it would be better if we all grew and manufactured what we needed locally. The third world does not benefit from trade; the rich in the first and the third world benefit from trade in the third world.
Australia is increasingly subject to the same treatment as third world countries, with foreign purchases of land, especially agricultural land, dispossessing the local farmers and local people forced by inflation to live in accomodation with no possibility of any self-sufficiency.
Colonialism produces poverty and there is a constant drive to keep that system going.
Sheila Newman, population sociologist
home page
Sandra Kanck should look at Canada's refugee debacle
So Sandra Kanck thinks cutting the intake of skilled migrants in favour of more refugees is the humanitarian course. She should take a look at research done on the impact of the immigration selection process for Canada and the United States. Professor Herbert Grubel in his seminal study of immigrants who came to Canada between 1990 and 2002 came to the very same conclusion that Ed Rubenstein and Robert Rector did concerning the United States. Unskilled immigrants, who comprise 80% of all those who come to Canada, including the relatives of "professionals", impose a fiscal burden that was $18.3 billion a year by 2002, but now is probably close to $30 billion. They simply cannot earn enough income to reimburse the state for the services they consume. In fact, to break even, the government needs to have a taxpayer earn $25,000 annually. McJobs will not pay for our health care system, our children's education or our pension outlays.
This deficit represents a huge opportunity cost, not only to Canadians who need those dollars for social services but to the investment needed to boost productivity. A Canada with higher productivity and a sustainable population would be better able to assist the world's poor, and poverty and overshoot are the root causes of the conflicts that drive people to flee their homelands. The Australian Conservation Foundation took the same position regarding Australia in recent years. The money deployed in providing services to unskilled immigrants is money that could also be spent in dispensing foreign aid made conditional on family planning. This money could reduce the 'push' factors that encourage migration in the first place, and would benefit the great majority of people who do not win the lottery of landing in North America. It is more cost effective to provide relief to people where they live rather than import their poverty to countries of high consumption and crippling welfare commitments. The money thrown at unskilled migrants in Canada could match the total sum spent by foreign governments in third world family planning programs, and benefit far more people than the 4 million foreign born Canadians who lack marketable skills.
None of this, however, is an argument for recruiting skilled migrants. There is no reason that native born citizens could not satisfy the demands of the job market. In Canada, young Aboriginals are crying out for vocational training and are not getting it, while multinationals are able to hire foreign workers a mere stone's throw from native reservations that suffer an unemployment rate of 75-80%. Without the needed education, and a Canadians-First hiring policy, they are a generation without hope and most end their days as refugees in the cities. Ironic that. So many bleeding hearts worrying about global refugees when we are making refugees out of our own citizens. And still, so many environmentalists are willing to open the flood gates even further. Don't refugees have an ecological footprint? Funny how Dr. William Rees never mentioned that in his book. I suppose that he is so interested in reducing personal footprints that he is oblivious to the number of "feet'.
We have no moral obligation to capsize our own lifeboat by taking on more passengers, skilled, unskilled, white, brown, English or non-English speaking. Closing our borders would be the best gift we could give to both ourselves and the world.
Tim
Surrender Australia
I recall Geoffrey Blainey, Australia's most eminent historian, claiming back in the 1980s that the Federal Government had effectively adopted a "Surrender Australia" policy. Blainey observed, ".. we jump as a nation from extreme to extreme. The old White Australia policy said rudely to half the world: Keep out. The new Surrender Australia policy says to that half of the world: Come in."
Fast forward to the present day and we have the likes of Bernard Salt arguing that we need to accept China's surplus millions or otherwise they will force them upon us - a view seemingly shared by Australia's political elites. For even if our elites don't accept the view that Australia has no choice but to become Lebensraum for Asia's masses, their immigration policies are nevertheless turning Australia into precisely that.
Kevin Rudd and the 'god' of materialism!
It is incredible that Kevin Rudd, a professing church-attending Christian, totally lacks any sense of social justice or compassion. Our government head-hunts the well-off professionals and educated from often developing countries and lures them to Australia at a time of high unemployment, housing stress and prohibitive education fees. Foreign students who have paid for their own education are invited to apply for PR. The great majority of asylum seekers are found to be genuine. However, the poor and persecuted are turned away from Australian shores! He is happy to pass them onto a basically Muslim country to be the Good Samaritan.
Kevin Rudd is totally focused on monetary values and on worshiping the Economy! According to what he said on 7.30 Report - ''I actually believe in a big Australia. I make no apology for that. I actually think it's good news that our population is growing,'' Mr Rudd said.
Rudd is totally ignoring costs of infrastructure that will be paid for by the public, the environmental damage to our already fragile ecological life-supporting systems, the social, cultural impacts we are seeing from excessive immigration, and the erosion of our lifestyles that used to be part of the "lucky country". His interest in the welfare of the Australian public is so blatantly lacking he is prepared to make this sacrifice for The Economy!
We in Australia are already world leaders in wildlife extinctions, with 40% of mammal disappearing in the last 200 years originating from Australia. Is their demise of no significance?
Christianity is about sharing compassion, the importance of individuals, and caring for God's Creation. However, Kevin Rudd seems to have missed the point and has sold out to the 'god' of materialism, and he is quite happy to be subservient to the monetary masters of mass markets and globalized powers.
Ken Henry adds rare moment of sanity to population 'debate'
Of all people, the Secretary of Treasury has finally added some sanity to the debate. This morning's news reported that the Government is under pressure to explain itself following Ken Henry's challenging the Government to explain exactly how the country can hope to support 35 million people by 2050. Rudd's response was (I will correct this when I get the precise wording):
That will pose some challenges we will have to meet.If he was paying any attention whatsoever to the news in his own state of Queensland, as well as the other major Eastern seaboard states and Western Australia, he would be left in no doubt that this country has already abysmally failed to meet the 'challenges' that have already been needlessly 'posed' by previous massive population growth. As this site has tirelessly pointed out, the principle driver of every major social, economic and ecological problem that this country is facing --- road congestion, threatened native species extinction, water shortages, increases in council rates and charges for electricity, gas, water, road usage, registration, etc. To cap it all off, Queenslanders are having to face the selling-off of $15 billion of assets paid for them by past taxes, because, according to Premier Anna Bligh, they must be flogged off to build the infrastructure necessary for the new arrivals. As Noosa Mayor Bob Abbot so pertinently pointed out recently, you can't go on doing the same thing as you have in the past and expect a different result. Perhaps it is time that the debate over immigration, long promised, began, and that Prime Minister Rudd also explain exactly why this country even needed to create these 'challenges' in the first place. He and his immigration Minister Chris Evans need to explain to the Australian public, whether Rudd and Evans are completely insane, or, whether, out of the sheer unnecessary stupidity of massive population growth, some powerful vested interests bankrolling the Labor Party somehow stand to gain from what intuition, common sense, as well as the evidence, tells all of us, necessarily makes all of us on average, poorer. [Ed. Article about speech now here.]
What would forefathers, who fought in New Guinea, have thought?
Think about how things would be today if, in the 1930s and 1940s in Australia, our political leaders had been prepared to make peace with the Japanese at any price, instead of preparing this country to defeat the threat from the North. How differently things would have turned out then.
Today, not only are houses in which native Australians previously could expect to live, been flogged off to cashed up foreigners, but our mineral wealth is being bought up and publicly owned assets are being sold.
What would our fathers and grandfathers who fought in the jungles of South East Asia to defeat a threatened Japanese military invasion make of our circumstances now?
Rudd talks up the invasion on 7.30 Report
Kerry O'Brien was interviewing Kevin Rudd tonight (22 October) and asked him a question regarding increased population. Rudd said that we want population growth, that we want a "big Australia" and that we did to want to suffer from population decline as they are in Europe.
How do they find such ignorant people to be prime ministers. Why should we have to put up with it?
Australia has never agreed to be invaded by nearly a million people a year (counting the temporaries) and what is wrong with Europe - they are not suffering. WE ARE!
Japanese whalers in Australian waters should be arrested!
Japan has indicated their intention and audacity of "hunting" whales in Australian waters this summer.
Japan's whale slaughter is internationally illegal, unlawful in Australian waters and their presence without permission is a potentially dangerous precedent for Australian citizens and the pristine marine environment.
The Federal Court in 2008 declared Japanese whaling in Australia’s Antarctic waters as unlawful under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999. Enforcement of the prohibition against whaling in the Australian Whale Sanctuary (AWS) under the EPBC Act rests on the shoulders of the Australian Government.
Any illegal vessels in the The Australian Whale Sanctuary, adjacent to the Australian Antarctic Territory, should find the perpetrators arrested by Australian customs for breaching Australian law.
Before being elected into government, Kevin Rudd promised "tough" action against Japan's whalers. However, his only "tough" action as Prime Minister so far has been against the crew of the Sea Shepherd when the Federal Police raided their ship, and recently when some of the crew had their visas delayed and shortened.
His real motive is to protect our "friendly" trade relations with Japan, at the cost of national security and the lives of hundreds of whales in protected waters. Already blue fin tuna have been almost hunted out of existence, and Japan's blatant disregard for quotas could also apply to whales!
Red Dog
A dog that looks like the illustration could be forgiven anything.
Barking and hyperacusis are unrelated
There is no connection between barking and hyperacusis.
From the article above ..
"1. HYPERACUSIS: These individuals have a collapsed tolerance to normal environmental sound .. "
Barking is NOT a "normal environmental sound." It is in fact, hideously and distressingly UNNATURAL.
Neighbourhood barking is usually the distress cry of a trapped animal.
Peter Bright
www.quietas.net
Hyperacusis.
There is no doubt that deflection of the adverse health effects of neighbourhood noise pollution through the promotion of hyperacusis as causal within the complainant population constitutes an implied excuse for uncontrolled barking dogs. Or at least an excuse for those who think its just fine to impose their acoustic preferences on the environment around them.
Hyperacusis is an organic dysfunction, while invasive neighbourhood noise is a disruptive psychological imposition.
When quiet enjoyment of the family home is denied through what is known as "impulse" sound, or any other high or low frequency disturbance, and when the World Health Organisation authoritatively and strongly warns governments at all levels to act to protect their populations NOW, then attributing distress to a well-researched condition such as hyperacusis shows yet another level of irresponsibility.
(How long will the average person tolerate his own dripping tap, the one that disrupts his concentration and prevents sleep? Not very long!)
I undertook a survey to establish the incidence of noise complaints within a targeted community. The survey was in some part devised to determine whether or not hyperacusis, or over-sensitivity to noise, or organic hearing dysfunction could be attributed to the hundreds of thousands of complaints about noise lodged each year with Australian authorities.
One of the questions contained in the survey:
"Is any other individual living in your household disturbed/distressed by the noise?"
98% of respondents replied "Yes".
So the propensity to focus on the receptors of this noise pollution as contributing to their own problem, seems medically unwise, and statistically unsupportable.
Hyperacusis - a condition of extreme sensitivity to sounds
I have also published this comment, with some variations here "Hyperacusis, a condition of extreme sensitivity to sounds"
Those who find particular sounds unbearable, where other people don't seem to understand, should find out about the condition of hyperacusis at this hyperacusis site. The website was created through the contributions of clinicians and patients from all over the world, who joined together to establish an extensive source of information to help patients recover from hyperacusis. It was by fully reading this site that I came to some understanding and tolerance of the level of complaint about dogs barking on this forum. The following site has a massive amount of helpful information, including case histories, a self-help treatment option, and specialist referral services. The self-help treatment option (using a cd with 'pink noise') is very low cost (instead of USD $3-4,000) and there are several accounts on-line of how it helped people to easily accomodate common sounds which they previously found intolerable. Even if you are not a sufferer, the syndrome is a very interesting one to read about. In fact all of us, as we grow older, may be at risk of symptoms of the 'recruitment' syndrome described below, although most people will not experience it in a devastating way.
Of particular interest was the page, which gives information about four kinds of hyperacusis, which I reproduce below.
"4 Types of Sound Sensitivity" "1. HYPERACUSIS: These individuals have a collapsed tolerance to normal environmental sound. The term commonly used to describe this condition is 'hyperacusis'. Hyperacusis can come on gradually or occur suddenly where the patient finds themself in a state of crisis. Patients who have a collapsed tolerance to sound need to have their Loudness Discomfort Levels (LDL's) established by a hearing healthcare professional. Normal LDL's are in the 85-90+ decibel range. Patients with hyperacusis would have LDL's well below that level. The common treatment for hyperacusis is listening to broadband pink noise though sound generators (special hearing aids) which must be ordered through a specially trained doctor or audiologist who administers Hyperacusis (Tinnitus) Retraining Therapy. The therapy often costs $3000-$4000 (depending on the clinician) and typically is not covered by insurance. There are two basic ways to deliver broadband pink noise to your ears. The best way starts with a clinician who is trained to diagnose the seriousness of your condition, explain to you the dynamics of hyperacusis, test your ears in gentle ways to determine your loudness discomfort levels (LDL), fit you with special hearing aids called noise (sound) generators that deliver broadband pink noise to your ears, monitor your progress and provide directive counseling until you recover. Treatment usually lasts 6 months. Clinicians who administer this kind of treatment were trained by Dr. Pawel Jastreboff (Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia). They are experts in treating hyperacusis and tinnitus patients. Their protocol is called Tinnitus Retraining Therapy (also know as TRT) and it has significantly helped tinnitus and hyperacusis patients recover. To learn more about TRT you might consider reading Dr. Jastreboff's book "Tinnitus Retraining Therapy." A list of TRT clinicians can be seen by visiting this website: http://www.tinnitus-pjj.com/referral.html The second way one can deliver broadband pink noise to their ears would be to purchase the broadband pink noise CD from the network. Instead of listening to broadband pink noise through special noise generators (TRT), a similar sound can be delivered to the ear by listening to a pink noise CD. With this method pink noise is delivered to the ears through a compact CD player (i.e. walkman). If you use a compact CD player it is very important that you use open air headphones. More detail is explained in the guideline that comes with this networks pink noise CD. Pink noise can also be downloaded from the pink noise CD to an ipod. The only caution here would be that the pink noise be converted to a WAV or AIFF format. 2. RECRUITMENT: There are many more individuals who have recruitment. Recruitment is the a rapid growth of perceived loudness for sounds in the pitch region of a person who has hearing loss. This phenomenon occurs because at some decibel level, the normal hair cells adjacent to the damaged hair cells (corresponding to the frequency of a hearing loss) are "recruited." At the decibel level at which these normal hair cells "kick in," perceived loudness shoots up rapidly, causing discomfort. In other words, at one point the person cannot hear the sound because they have hearing loss (in that frequency), then when the sound reaches a certain loudness and/or frequency the person is blown away. Once they finally hear the sound, it is perceived as far too loud. Recruitment is a common phenomenon in cultures where the majority of their lives have been saturated with too much noise – like our Western culture. Common treatment is the same as it is for hyperacusis unless the persons hearing loss is so pronounced that listening to broadband pink noise would be of no benefit to them. 3. HYPERACUTE HEARING: Then there are individuals who are sound sensitive at birth but it is only specific to certain frequencies heard at loud levels (typically above 70 decibels). It may seem like we are splitting hairs here but remember – the key words with hyperacute hearing are – sound sensitive to specific frequencies heard at loud levels. These frequencies are typically labeled 'problem' frequencies. Autistic children are good examples of this. They can tolerate some sound at normal or even loud volumes but some frequencies are intolerable. Commonly autistic children, children who are marginally autistic, or non-autistic individuals who have hyperacute hearing are treated with auditory integration therapy (AIT). AIT takes regular music and filters out the problem frequencies through a special machine called an audiokinetron. Somehow this therapy seems to 'retune' their ears and normalizes their hearing tolerances. The music is listened to at decibel levels which can peak up to 90 decibels. This creates a problem for the hyperacusis patient. The therapy is too loud and only worsens the condition of the hyperacusis patient whose Loudness Discomfort Levels have been compromised. Hyperacusis and recruitment share part of a common pathway but in some ways we are very different and our retraining therapies run very much a different path. Phonophobia often develops with an individual who has a significant collapsed tolerance to sound. They not only fear the sound of the environment they are experiencing in real time (right now) they worry about the sound that future events of the day or in the near future will produce. Phonophobia can take over ones life and make one feel they need to isolate themselves to survive. This is a recipe for disaster. It is critical that we keep our ears active to rebuild our tolerances to sound. That is why broadband pink noise is so crucial to bringing us back to the mainstream of life. 4. MISOPHONIA: (dislike of sound) has often been thought to be hyperacusis. This is not true. Let us be clear here. A hyperacusis patient can have a strong fear of sound (phonophobia) or a specific dislike of specific soft sounds (misophonia) but neither one of these symptoms stand alone as hyperacusis. Hyperacusis is a collapsed tolerance to normal environmental sounds. They hyperacusis patient may or may not have phonophobia and/or misophonia. If the hyperacusis patient IS also dealing with phonophonia and/or misophonia then their clinician needs to address these issues is addition to treating the patient for hyperacusis. It is also important to note that a person can have phonophobia and/or misophonia and not have hyperacusis at all. Sound confusing. Let's talk... We will discuss forms of misophonia. They are not a separate catagory of sound sensitivity because the issues we are about to talk do not involve loud sounds. Some individuals are not sensitive to loud sounds (in other words they have normal loudness discomfort levels - LDL's) but they are unable to tolerate the sound of people eating or chewing. Oddly enough they have no problem tolerating the sound of their own eating. These individuals have a difficult time eating with their family and friends and some insist on eating all by themselves. They become irritated or enraged at meals and sometimes. This is not hyperacusis. The patients primary goal would be to neutralize or refocus the dislike they have of these specific sounds. Most of these individuals live very normal lives with the only exception of being unable to tolerate all the dynamics of other people eating. Often these individuals have been unsuccessful finding any information about this condition. To the best of our knowledge no articles have been written in any qualified medical journal and no studies or research has been done about this. Patients seeking treatment from their clinician may have to copy the information from this website to help their doctor understand what is taking place here. Treatment for these patients comes from clinicians who have a specific protocol for misophonia. Search the network message board using the word 'misophonia' to learn more about this problem and protocols suggested. Usually these individuals are sensitive to particular sounds which are not loud in volume. For example, some individuals have a hearing sensitivity to certain consonants (i.e. s, t, p, c). Once again, although this is a sound sensitivity issue, this is not hyperacusis. It is misophonia. Misophonia is a symptom which is misunderstood. The word 'misophonia' was invented by Dr. Pawel Jastreboff to help clear some of the misunderstanding. Aside from a misophonia protocol it is not clear whether broadband pink noise helps the patient improve their dislike of sound. Some individuals with misophonia have been diagnosed with an obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) and have sought treatment from a psychotherapist."home page Copyright to the author. Please contact sheila [AT] candobetter org or the editor if you wish to make substantial reproduction or republish.
I share your concerns about barking dogs, however ...
I share most of the feelings expressed above, having also been the victim of accoustic assault by barking dogs on a number of occasions throughout my life.
However, whilst, of course, my overwhelming sympathy lies with those who wish to end the destruction of the quality of life caused by barking dogs and their often selfish, inconsiderate owners, we still need to bear, at the very back of our minds, the fact that our demands upon dog owners of good will, may cause them problems too.
Appropriate solutions may involve the victim of accoustic assault helping in some way. Personally if my yard was fenced, I would choose to allow a neighbours dog to roam in it when I am home and the neighbour is away, although I can understand why some might not be so willing on health grounds.
I also see no reason why an owner of an offending dog should not be willing to allow a neighbour he/she trusts to come into his/her yard in order to appropriately discipline an offending dog in order to stop the dog barking.
If we are going to assert our rights against accoustic assault, as well as assertively standing up for ourselves, we also need to demonstrate some capacity to accomodate the reasonable needs or well-meaning dog owners.
"Social housing" is the new solution to a housing shortage.
Land developers, builders, the finance industry and our State governments are all part of the great growth lobby - to increase our population by using land and housing as a source of profits. Housing should be a basic right, and we used to be a land of high home-owners. Now, with our massive immigration numbers, the demand is outstripping supply. The prices have been globalised and are way above what they should be, and Australian families are losing out while big businesses are amassing wealth. "Social housing" is what is being pushed for now - high density living not for new arrivals like the Housing commission in the 1960s, but to cope with Australians who can't afford a house with a back yard.
Barking dogs.
I truly understand that logic and reason should be safely invoked on the matter of externally generated noise when that noise is forced inside neighbouring premises. Logic and reason should ideally be based on the premise that where there are laws against something, the laws are usually for a good reason and that the person responsible will react well to any polite request for domestic quiet.
But does it really matter how hard I am punched on the arm, or whether or not the force, time, location and reason for the punch could or should be my responsibility to negotiate ? The punch on the arm, however slight, is a physical and psychological assault. The same standard, under law, has to apply for acoustic assault that is delivered into the sanctity of someone else's living and sleeping quarters.
I doubt if there is going to be any safe way that those who want to live inside their homes minus acoustic assault can (nervously) negotiate with offenders who didn't demonstrate sufficient social conscience to disallow their own trans-boundary noise in the first instance.
If they know that their dog is barking, then a law abiding and considerate citizen would ensure that they attended to it immediately, or at the very least, from the moment they are notified. Too often offenders when notified, become haughtily resistant, making all manner of excuses. There seems to be some kind of nasty human personality traits developed in recent decades that make it almost impossible to approach the owners of dogs.
We we are seeing more and more that innocent people who think they are doing the right thing in courageously and personally asking for quiet, are being rewarded with physical or verbal assault. There are increasing numbers of complaintants who are rewarded for their courtesy in taking the direct approach --- they are further assaulted, or murdered. Just recently a lethal stabbing happend in Australia when someone asked for a dog to be quiet.
On the suggestion of allowing other people's dogs to play in our backyards: I think this idea is fraught with danger. Even if my opinion is not agreeable to others, I invoke the natural right to express it, and though I strongly disagree with the writer of this opinion, I also strongly defend his/her right to provide it.
In no way, given the immense grief that barking dog owners have given me and my family, would I feel sufficiently magnanimous to take responsibility for the socialising of anyone else's dog in our backyard.
As well, the potential damages/financial liabilities on owners who let their dogs play on someone else's premises could be horrendous. The owner of a dog that delivers a dose of roundworm to an unspecting or visiting infant, causing major vital organ damage,or bites, or just pushes over a tiny tot who is then further harmed, could likely find him/herself the subject of a costly legal claim.
Anyone who would like to keep a dog has every right to do so. There are many lonely people whose only conversation is with a dog, and some might even enjoy the sound of their dog barking. But they must be warned, and they must understand and conform with the legal requirement from the outset, that every aspect of their dog's behaviour belongs inside their own premises.
For us, we only want to choose whether or not we have a dog barking inside our homes. Nothing more, nothing less.
The land mafia
The cost of land drives the cost of every other thing up. We have to get rid of the land mafia. It is because of them that we work so hard, produce too much, consume too much, are too many, and are facing ecological peril.
Sheila Newman, population sociologist
home page
Copyright to the author. Please contact sheila [AT] candobetter org or the editor if you wish to make substantial reproduction or republish.
New national park in Victoria to be debated next week.
Four new national parks are set to be created in northern Victoria within weeks to protect river red gum forests.
The National Parks Bill was introduced to State Parliament last week and it will be debated early next month.
Under the plan 150,000 hectares of forest along the Murray, Goulburn and Ovens rivers will be protected and stock grazing and logging will be banned.
What is needed is NSW to do the same.
The National Parks Association alleges that Forests New South Wales engaged in bullying and intimidation by claiming that a reduction in logging operations would cause massive rural job losses.
NPA told Forests New South Wales the logging had to stop in the Murray-Mildura area, and all logging had to stop in the Ramsar-listed wetlands by May 31.
The same arguments of "job losses"! How will our environment survive the need for jobs when our population doubles (or more) by 2050?
Please fill in the form (link above) to send a supportive message to Premier Rees.
Working hours
A few decades ago journalists and social commentators in Australia used to write and talk about the challenge of the future being how we would spend our copious leisure because working hours and the working week would be shorter in the future. They said it was expected that a 3 or 4 day week may be the norm. They were not talking about under employment, but a society where this amount of work was sufficient to support a reasonable standard of living -a standard of living equal to the prevailing one.
The reason this was expected was with improvements in technology which would deliver us this almost nirvana.
How differently things have worked out. Of course people are now working longer hours than they did a few decades ago! Now 2 people have to work to pay off a mortgage on a house which is not as good - (may be bigger)- but not as good in terms of all that matters - its position, amenity and proximity to services compared with that available to their parents' generation.
This did not have to happen.
There must be a very clear unequivocal way of measuring material well being without confusing the measurement with inter generational comparisons of home electronics technology (TV , Hi fi computers etc)
I think the measure would have to be associated with the hours worked to pay off or secure the family home
Sick-leave Australia talks lightweight but could be worse
A few interesting calls in to the program, including one from a Belgian currently working in West Australia. He pointed out that in Europe, workers have 7 or 8 weeks annual leave and are paid up to 80% of their wages for as long as they are ill with a medical certificate - with no limit. Others rang in and reminded people of the problem that you cannot take your sick leave with you when you change jobs - with rare exceptions. This is the reason that a lot of people stay in jobs. (I was reminded of Michael Moore's film about the U.S. hospital and medical insurance system, Sicko, where workers with health problems are chained to their jobs by their employee sick-leave plans, fearing that they will be uninsurable if they go to another job.)
Another reason raised, was that the amount of sick leave often depended on the relationship people had with their direct manager, which certainly rings true. If you feel that your manager doesn't even know or care who you are, then why should you care about the impact of taking a day off might have on the workplace.
Nothing fundamental was raised, however, such as the fact that employees are locked into the wage-system by the rising price of land. In the first place, high land costs are a big obstacle to becoming partly or fully self-sufficient, as in growing your own food. Secondly, starting a business requires you to pay land costs or rental before you even hire people or manufacture a product, leaving very little margin, if any for profit. Thirdly, the cost of mortgages makes it necessary for people to get high incomes one way or another, and the banks keep raising the bar, so the pursuit of 'wealth' is endless wage-slavery or round the clock work in your own business.
PAYE tax was not touched on. PAYE tax came out in the early 1940s and has never gone away. Most of us accept it without thinking. An indication of this is the lack of blogs on the subject. Why is it important. Well, governments have gradually become dependent on a large swathe of employees continually forking out one third or more of their earnings so that the governments can pass these on to their friends in big business, who are insatiable, as we have learned from the global financial crash and beyond if we had not already worked it out.
The theory was that we paid taxes to get things done for the community, but now we are told that we must pay charges for all the things that taxes once paid for - water, roads, justice - etc.
The dependence on PAYE tax locks societies into keeping a lot of people in the wage-earning force, with few alternatives. This is one of the big reasons that increased leisure is always put off for some time into the future. This is the reason that our societies are not allowed to slow down by governments, who require the turnover from endless growth just in order to pay the interest on the debts they have accumulated in various grandiose schemes they have subsidised their corporate friends in.
So, these are some of the reasons why most people in society are treated like little children who must ask a doctor politely for a certificate for a day off if they are sick and who must toil in environmentally and socially damaging jobs in a growth economy instead of contributing as adults to the real, not-for-profit community.
Sheila Newman, population sociologist
home page
Sick of the media propaganda
I'm sick of their bloody propaganda to work, work work!
I want to buy land to provide for myself and my family and go and have some kind of life before I die, but I can't even afford a mortgage. I'm 55 and I don't call this progress.
Australia is the melting pot!
What is the insidious agenda of our Australian government? Our population will be at least 50 million by 2050, and all the problems we have now will blow-out into absolute tragedy by then! Free trade with China will, and has already, destroyed most of Australia's manufacturing industries. We have Indian students sourcing entry level and casual jobs while our own youth are struggling to find positions. Clearly internationals are more compliant and docile then Australians who probably know their rights! We are part of a global melting pot.
Are just being homogenized into a conglomerate of "Asia" rather than having a distinct environment, history, culture, national identity and economy? "Racism" is a great silencer.
HIgher profile if it impacted on Australia's fishing industry!
The disaster has now entered its ninth week after the failure at the weekend to plug the spill, which has seen oil spew into the Timor Sea at an estimated rate of up to 400 barrels a day. The operator of the well that has leaked tens of millions of litres of oil and will try again to stop the spill this week.
While the damage caused to wildlife in Australian waters is reportedly "small", Indonesian fisherman are saying the spill has killed thousands of fish.
Amhad Junaidi, the editor of an Indonesian publication with reporters in West Timor, says dead fish are turning up in large numbers.
This disaster would have a bigger impact in Australia's media if our fishing industry was suffering! The oceans are becoming sewers in the quest for economic benefits, power and jobs!
A new film may interest you...about the Gamo Highlands, Ethiopia
Greetings Helga,
I was pleased to just read yours and Antony's exchange about Another Green Revolution. And, I'm thinking you may enjoy watching our new short film, A Thousand Suns, about the Gamo people in Ethiopia and how they've been living sustainably for 10,000 years, until now, when their way of life is being threatened by the introduction of 'new' Green Revolution technologies and initiatives from the West. Please go to http://www.globalonenessproject.org if you are interested in viewing the film online or ordering the DVD (free of charge).
Best regards,
Alan Zulch
Global Oneness Project
Email: [email protected]
Many potential pot-holes to fall into with this broad topic
Thanks Sheila, it was hard to avoid some heavy issues when dealing with a topic like "racism", and I was careful not to fall into preconceived potholes. The use of the term "illegal arrivals" is what the media calls them, and how they are regarded - guilty until proven innocent! The great majority are shown to be genuine refugees. A great many allies were saved from persecution and death when the Nazi's occupied Europe by "people smugglers" - now these people are vilified as "scum"!
If our economic immigration was not sprawling our cities and impacting on our environment, on our living conditions and hip-pockets, we could afford to treat asylum seekers with compassion and be more generous with humanitarian assistance, but our so-called Christian MP, Kevin Rudd, is so obsessed by materialism and commerce that he is turning away the impoverished and the needy who come to our shores for help.
As for One Nation, their website didn't mention "Asians" or any particular race. A pity that Pauline Hanson failed to treat the topic of immigration objectively and with integrity.
Totally Agree!
Unfortunately the 7.30 Report won't revisit this issue for a long time because they've *done* the population issue now and we can just all move on!
I was extremely disappointed in the segment, it was biased and inaccurate.
Ad hominem
In response to 'Tigerquoll's ignorance', I note that you have still failed to argue with the issues raised and are relying solely on ad hominem.
I know of no writer on this forum whose theories are subsidised by anyone. The thing about candobetter.org is that it discusses issues which the professional press won't discuss due to vested and corporate interests. The universities are in the same boat; post grad students don't get corporate scholarships for criticising corporate interests, notably population growth and overdevelopment which both threaten our natural environment, not to mention democracy. Your use of metaphors like 'toilet roll tube' is interesting and makes you sound like a flamer.
Sheila Newman, population sociologist
home page
Copyright to the author. Please contact sheila [AT] candobetter org or the editor if you wish to make substantial reproduction or republish.
Some complex issues here
Vivienne,
A stalwart beginning on covering some very big issues!
There are a number of things which should generate more detailed discussion and, in some cases, refining of definition, but that is the nature of such a big subject.
1. I will start with the use of the term 'illegal arrivals.' I think I am right in understanding that you are referring to people arriving here to seek asylum. In that case they are not illegal if they are seeking asylum under the terms of the Geneva convention, "... the signatory state of the Geneva Convention must respect the prohibition of expulsion or return (refoulement) in accordance with Art. 33 of the Geneva Convention. This is understood as a prohibition of extradition and expulsion or of – at the border – rejection of a refugee forcing him/her to return to a state in which they are at risk of political persecution. Expulsion or rejection to a safe third state it is however not intrinsically opposed." (Source).
They are therefore not illegal until and unless, after their application has been assessed, they are found to be non-refugees and then remain in the country without permission.
I know it sounds like a detail but use of the term, 'illegal' has been the source of national division in this country, with protracted hostilities at grass-roots level and in government.
2. Racism and One Nation. From memory: Pauline Hanson's maiden speech, which was written for her by her then manager/mentor, whose name as I recollect was Pasquale, expressed concern that Australia was about to be swamped by Asians. If she had only said that Australia was about to be swamped by immigration numbers, it would have been difficult, even for the big-populationnists, to have muddied her reputation. Pasquale claimed to have written her speech and I believe that it has been suggested (possibly even by him) that she did not understand the importance of those words or the impact it would make. I got the impression from his book that Pasquale was a supporter of high immigration, in the style of Menzies, wanting British immigrants. So my impression is that One Nation was not anti-population growth or high immigration; it was anti-immigration from particular areas of the world or of particular ethnicities. Whether its stance on this was racist or had some other basis, I am not aware. And, whether the party acquired that policy as a reaction to Hanson's first speech attracting so much attention, or whether it started out with that as an important policy, I am not aware. It seems clear that media-manipulated reaction served to radicalise the party. The issue of racism took the limelight off the activities of the entrenched political parties and their mainstream media marketers. The ongoing conduct of our big political parties and the mainstream press together seems to indicate that they will seek any opportunity to reduce and destroy any opposition because it will threaten entrenched vested interests. Our incumbent press and politicians are not in favour of robust politics, just the managed appearance of such. So, we need more discussion of these issues.
3. The White Australia Policy. See also Overpopulation, immigration, multiculturalism and the White Australia policy.The exclusion of Chinese etc was more complicated than 'racism', although racism was the reason the elites used to justify slavery. From the point of view of the ordinary worker, the White Australia policy was part of an industrial agreement which involved negotiating with the Colonial Sugar Company (an old slaver from the time of the 18th and 19th C trade wars between Britain and France) to drop slaving in Australia (which consisted mainly of abducting Kanaks from Polynesia as I understand it). Another objective was for Australia's immigration policy to exclude immigrants from countries with 'slave labour wages' who might undermine Australians' capacity to negotiate wages. In return business was offered some protection from free trade and labour was offered training and protection from exploitation in the form of 'conciliation and arbitration where disputes extended across a state boundary' in the National Constitution (See the Harvester Case below). [That is why Prime Minister Howard's recourse to corporations law in the same clause of the constitution was important, since corporations may arguably be excluded from that labour protection agreement - cannot remember details.] The stuff about immigration and slaving was argued out with Deakin and others around the turn of the 19th-20th century. It also involved an inquiry into the decline in the birth rate of NSW and laws to stop people using contraception or having abortions. These last were linked into the desire of business, notably banking, which had sunk too much into property development and therefore was trying - like our government now - to get more immigrants and raise the birthrate. (Property had crashed as the SE states ran out of gold, there was a drought and a bunch of other catastrophes. The problem was not so much that the birth rate had declined, but that all the men in the SE states went to QLD and then to WA looking for gold there and few new immigrants arrived. The Colonial Sugar people and various people on boards of banks and sundry institutions were all on the immigration board as well, trying to turn up the numbers there.) I went into this in some detail in chapter 6, pages 102-110 of The Growth Lobby and its Absence.
"A Fair Go Economy - Events The Harvester Judgement Print Version Email This The Harvester Judgment, as it is known in shorthand, was the result of a case in the industrial courts, fought between a powerful industrialist and social ideologues, that paved the way for the establishment of the principle of the 'basic wage' in Australia. The Harvester judgement is often referred to as a founding story, from which arguments and debates can hang, rather than a story in its own right. It has also become shorthand for what it was not: it was not about equal pay for women, for example. But here, we draw out the story of the judgment itself, the characters behind it, the workers behind it and the material objects themselves; the 'harvesters' and their significance. In 1906 the Protectionist Party and the Australian Labour Party were united in an effort to introduce measures that would guarantee workers the right to fare and reasonable wages and working conditions. It was called 'New Protection'. The Constitution did not give the Commonwealth direct power to legislate on these matters. So, in order to sidestep, the Excise Tariff (Agricultural Machinery) Act was established. It created an excise on locally made machinery that would be waived if workers were paid 'fair and reasonable' wages. In 1907 Melbourne based manufacturer and owner of the Harvester Company, Hugh Victor McKay applied to the Federal Conciliation and Arbitration Court for a remission of the excise duty established under the Excise Tariff (Agricultural Machinery) Act. He claimed that his workers already received 'fair and reasonable' wages. The Agricultural Implement Makers Society, the union that covered McKay's workers, opposed the application. Hugh Victor McKay was well known for his anti-union attitudes and discouraged union membership. In evidence the union revealed: "About 5 months ago (probably April or May), a meeting of men employed at McKay's was held during lunchtime, in protest against having to work overtime for ordinary rates, at Braybrook. George Bishop was deputed to wait on McKay and state the case. George McKay said that the firm had given a bonus to employees at the end of last year and therefore it was not fair to expect extra pay for overtime. Overtime was abolished for a while. McKay did not mention that the bonus was paid mostly to the foremen and others whose duty was to extract the greatest amount of work from the men ... " Noel Butlin Archives, Canberra, Harvester File, 1906 Reasonable And Frugal Comfort The Harvester hearing took place in Melbourne from October 7 until the November 8, 1907. The Arbitration Court's newly appointed president, Henry Bournes Higgins, heard the case. "... (Higgins had) courtly manners and a scholarly mind with ultra radicalism, almost priggish lofty principles and quixotic independence- he had a deep compassion for the under privileged." P.G. McCarthy, 'Justice Higgins and the Harvester Judgement' in Jill Roe (ed) 'Social Policy in Australia 1901 - 1975', Cassell, 1976 A definition of a 'fair and reasonable wage' had to be established. Higgins employed Pope Leo XIII's encyclical Rerum Novarum, establishing that remuneration "must be enough to support the wage earner in reasonable and frugal comfort". He heard evidence from workers and their wives. Following, he accounted for light, clothes, boots, furniture, life insurance, union pay, sickness, books, newspapers, alcohol, tobacco, transport fares and so on. Higgins settled on a figure of 2 pounds and 2 shillings per week or 7 shillings a day as a minimum wage. This was higher than what McKay's employees were receiving. McKay was ordered to pay 20,000 pounds in duty. In his judgement, Higgins stated: "I regard the applicant's undertaking as a marvel of enterprise, energy and pluck…he is allowed - if my view of the Act is correct - to make any profits that he can and they are not subject to investigation. But when he chooses, in the course of his economies, to economise at the expense of human life, when his economy involves the withholding from his employees of reasonable remuneration, or reasonable conditions of human existence, then, as I understand the Act, Parliament insists on the payment of the Excise duty." [p.8] McKay responded: "The maximum price that they could charge customers was fixed by statute, and the rates for labour were left to be determined by the whim of the arbitration Court. The only parties considered were the consumer and the worker. The work of the Arbitration Court was entrusted to a newly appointed judge of the High Court, who came equipped with admirable ideals, and a high resolve to achieve them, but whose previous career and associations were not of the kind to fit him for dealing with such involved problems. No question as to his desire to do what was right is raised, but he allowed the predilections he had nursed for years to follow him to the Bench, and without regard to consequences, he set up new standards and conditions of his own. The results of his decision were momentous ... " Hugh Victor McKay, Museum of Victoria, Old Mckay Archives, B6/81 Opinion Divided Media was divided over the Higgins judgement. On November 14, 1907, 'The Worker' declared the Higgins Judgement "momentous'. The Argus of November 11, 1907 was less supportive. "In practice, Commonwealth regulation of wages was bound to do injustice and grave injury to industry - the 7 shillings per day for unskilled labourers - will be used as a justification for demanding higher wages over a wider industrial are than that which it actually applies." 'The Argus', 11 November 1907 McKay refused to pay the duty demanded of him. He appealed to the High Court in a challenge to the constitutionality of the Excise Tariff (Agricultural Machinery) Act. The High Court ruled in McKay's favour, 3:2. Justices Higgins and Isaacs dissented. Higgins asked, "Why should the Commonwealth Parliament be able to levy taxation with a view to the benefit of the manufacturers, and not be able to levy taxation with a view to the benefit of their employees?" Gary Souter, 'Acts of Parliament', Melbourne University Press, 1988, p.101 In response to the High Court decision, McKay stated: "The Excise Act was declared to be ultra vires - The Federal Parliament had gone beyond its powers, all the ingenuity and eloquence spent on the measure, all the litigation devoted to its practical enforcement, and all the elaborate conditions laid down by the Arbitration Court and by the Customs authorities, crumbled to nothing." Hugh Victor McKay, Museum of Victoria, Old Mckay Archives, B6/81 Despite his victory in the High Court, Victor McKay spent the next years of his life defending his business actions. The Harvester judgment had made an impact. In 1913 he said: "Although I have given employment to many thousands, and though I have retained the goodwill of those who worked for me, I in some way incurred the hostility of labour organisations. I was made the target for their combined artillery, and through their kind offices ... I claimed the right to employ whom I pleased, without reference to the question whether my workers were unionists or not ... There was no dispute about wages, hours or other conditions. The only question was my right to employ non-unionists ... " 1913 Election Statement, Museum of Victoria, Old McKay Archives, b7/4 In 1922: "I do not believe with the basic wage for the Commonwealth. In other parts of the world it is a minimum wage for the minimum man and a maximum wage for the maximum man - each man according to his ability and capacity. God did not make men equal - it is no use trying to pretend He did, or to make laws as though He did, or to pay people according to their requirements instead of according to their services." Letter to William Morris Hughes, 10 March 1922, Museum of Victoria, OMA, B/5/25 Higgins was the ultimate victor. He regarded the minimum wage as sacrosanct and applied it to subsequent judgements in his long and distinguished career as president of the Conciliation and Arbitration Court. "The Harvester judgment and Higgins are foundationally important. The philosophy was so right and so in tune with the Australian ethos that it spread. And not just through federal jurisdiction - it became embraced by various state jurisdictions. I think it is impossible to overstate the significance of both the judgement and its author, Henry Bournes Higgins." Bob Hawke in Paul Kelly, 100 Years- The Australian Story, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 2001, p.107. From interview recorded for TV series '100 Years: The Australian Story'"Sheila Newman, population sociologist home page
Media should report on the 99% problem not the 1% refugees
Vivienne,
I agree.
Australian media should report on the 99% problem not the 1% refugees. The thousands of Tamils fleeing Sinhalese persecution, in terms of immigration impact, pales in comparison to economic immigrants encouraged by Rudd's undisclosed massive but miguided immigration agenda. But the humanitarian crisis is globally more significant, yet dispicably ignored under Rudd government's priorities.
Federally, Australia is engaging more with India and it is the economic immigrants from India that are part of Australia's immigration wave (numbering in the hundreds of thousands each year) and overloading our public infrastructure - health, housing, public transport, etc.
The federal government's secret immigration policy is imposing an unsustainable burden on mainly NSW and VIC state governments which chronically fall short on providing their existing population with adequate health, housing, public transport, etc. Rudd's secret obsession for record immigration is undemocratic. It has has no transparency, no target and no mandate.
Meanwhile, the Rudd government follows Howard's racist anti-humanitarian policy of not only rejecting our region's refugees (numbering in the hundreds each year), but is complicit by not taking a humanitarian stand against the regional dictatorship of Sri Lanka.
Gray reports suggest there is a mini Rwanda genocide equivalent taking place in our region with the Sinhalese persecution of ethnic Tamils and yet Australia stands by.
Tigerquoll's ignorance
Yes Tiger as always anything that the people who are out there and observe what you don't is labelled as rubbish and baseless, false. There's no point anyone giving you the pros because you see all this through a toilet roll tube and only accept data presented by someone who keeps their wallet full with a study and theory. Do you ever spend any time out in the bush, are you city based ?
Just curious.
Bathurst
I hope this goes Worldwide, this is a total disgrace that we can so easily kill our National Icons..I have shed many tears for the plight of our animals......I suppose some will be happy when they are all gone and the generations to come can only wonder what they were like....I'm certainly glad I will not live to see that
One law for all.
Yes, Viviene I am quite aware of the distinction between prejudice and discrimination. One should also recognise that the common usage of the latter word - as it has been for twenty plus years now - is that discrimination in the context of equal opportunity refers to prejudiced behaviour.
Contrary to what you claim, all people are secular - otherwise they simply wouldn't exist. Secular means 'belonging to a time'. If people have faith that they also consider 'eternal' issues, well good for them. Nobody is preventing that. There is nothing in the government discussion paper that suggested that such faith-based roles be subject to EEO legislation. However there are plenty of areas where the activities of such bodies are not faith-based, but rather are the same sort of tasks done in secular institutions of the same nature.
Religious organisations - in part courtesy of various government agencies providing them funding - are a major employer in the education and welfare sector. Surely should come under the same laws as any other organisation performing identical tasks.
Birrell on immigration
".. there is less wealth to go around, so each of us on average must become poorer"
You are correct - population growth only serves to dilute our per capita earnings from mineral exports.
As Monash University academic Bob Birrell noted in his response to the Productivity Commission's 2006 report on immigration:
"Currently Australia has the capacity to maintain high levels of exports deriving from its renewable and non-renewable resources. It can only do this because of its small population, that is, because there is currently a substantial surplus between what can be produced and what is needed for consumption in Australia. There is very little relationship between extra migration and the scale of rural and mining output in Australia. However, a migrant induced increase in population has a direct relationship with the level of imports, in the sense that imports will rise at least as fast as the migrant population rises.
In these terms it is hard to see the economic argument for high migration, at least from the point of view of most incumbents."
Sold out
Even just 4 houses sold to a foreign buyer for 20 million in Brighton as I understood happened recently, pushes 4 Australian buyers who missed out further down market pushing up the prices of many more houses which would have been bought for less than 5 million each which in turn pushes up the prices of many more houses further down the chain. It is true that as the number of houses affected increases as we move further "down market" the actual increase in the price is less but the purchasing power of those in this market is less and so they are adversely affected.
Unfortunately it is is not just 4 houses though- it is lot's more and it is ongoing.
This effect is real becasue houses are a relatively limited commodity- not a commodity where the supply can easily and swiftly be increased and within a given area they cannot be increased at all except by densification which means that the quality of the commodity decreases.
The fact that some houses bought from overseas lie vacant while we have homeless and near homeless people vying with each other for rental properties, driving the prices skywards adds a further dimension of shame
The child like voice of Lindy Burns asked rhetorically and gaily one day on her afternoon drive show why Australians should expect to own a home. Well done Lindy!- it's good to normalize decreasing housing affordability when that's what we are getting. Not good for the bulk of your audience but good for those who profit from housing scarcity and rising prices.
We need some old-fashioned patriotism in Australia!
Japanese company Kirin Holding will now combine juice, dairy and alcohol operations into one company, Lion Nathan National Foods, and become the largest supplier to Australian supermarkets with a portfolio of prominent brands. Tasmanian farmers are being paid less than 21c for every litre of milk by National Foods, well below the cost of production of about 39c a litre instead of 50c per litre. National Foods executives recently claimed they had no obligation to help farmers.
Why did the Federal Court approve of selling out our dairy produce? We already have globalisation of tertiary education, real estate, population, jobs, and now an iconic Australian product - the dairy industry! Australian produce should be for Australia, not overseas exports and overseas owners. This is a betrayal, a sell-out by the Federal Court.
This industry is cruel, a heavy water consumer and not sustainable. The solution, economically and environmentally? Funding to restructure the industry and create plant-based dairies, and rekindle some old-fashioned buy-Australian patriotism into our nation!
Australia being colonised to suit Real Estate 'industry'
Original title was "Selling Australia". - JS
This is how modern Australia, the "knowledge nation," makes a buck these days - selling its houses, along with its residency rights, to Chinese colonists err... investors.
According to one recent article in the Herald Sun, Chinese buyers now account for around 30 per cent of house sales in Melbourne. The article notes that the Asian buying spree is pushing up prices and worsening the housing shortage.
The Herald Sun article quotes Jin Shang, real estate agency Jellis Craig's first Mandarin-speaking agent, as saying: "Chinese want residential properties here because they feel comfortable in Australia's multicultural environment and they know it has one of the world's best education systems."
So, the Chinese are not coming because they have any interest in the institutions, people, culture, traditions, or natural environment of Australia. No, they are coming because they want more comfort, better education services (courtesy of the Australian taxpayer), and a "multicultural environment" that allows them to surround themselves with fellow Chinese so that they never have to integrate into wider Australian society.
The Australian government, acting on behalf of its mates in the real estate industry, is effectively inviting foreign populations to move in and colonise parts of the country.
And, once again, Australians are forced to carry the costs. They have to compete with rich foreigners for housing in a country already facing a chronic housing shortage. They have to pay their taxes just so that wealthy Chinese can simply move in and make use of Australia's public services and infrastructure. They have to tolerate the creation of foreign enclaves within their cities, knowing that any objection, no matter how slight or reasonable, will result in them being labelled "xenophobic" and "racist."
This is the reality of life in modern Australia, a big piece of real estate up for sale to the highest bidder.
Attorney General Rob Hulls got this one right!
Prejudice is unreasonable feelings, opinions, or attitudes, esp. of a hostile nature, regarding a racial, religious, or national group.
Discrimination is the power of making fine distinctions; discriminating judgement. Employers, and clients, should be able to make distinctions based on reason and beliefs.
I think you are confusing prejudice and discrimination, or discernment. What "secular" tasks are there? Not all people are secular, and not all values and actions are. There is no universality in spiritual issues. It is about an church/religious/not-for-profit organisation being able to uphold their holistic aims, their objectives, and all roles should be towards these aims. Without unified ideals, an organisation would be weakened and be less effective.
Response to Red plague Grey plague gratuitous comment
I have published this comment from 'anonymous' because it is an excellent example of unsupported criticism. Red Plague Grey Plague is a scientific article which cites its sources and theory. The anonymous critic calls it 'old bit of rubbish' but is unable to cite or argue a single point.
There is nothing wrong with arguing a point scientifically, but candobetter.org is not the Murdoch or the Fairfax Press or parliament, where you can assert paid-for nonsense repetitively, assured that it will be promoted as gospel.
If the kangaroo 'management' lobby and industry were not assisted by spin merchants and government propaganda in the real-estate expansion economy they could not hold the attention of a group of small children at a magic show.
There are plenty of solutions on these pages, but they don't involve propping up theives and spin merchants.
Sheila Newman, population sociologist
home page
Red plague Grey Plague
Red plague Grey Plague, how can you use an old bit of rubbish like that as a scientific truth. Wake up to yourselves and find something important to whinge about. You lot always beat drums about issues and tell people what they should and shouln't do. Just let me see a solution come from one of you just once.
Religious freedoms are constrained by universal rights
Viviene, such values are discriminatory. Nobody is claiming that this is leading to a value-free society, but rather that the values are based on universality, rather than exclusion.
As the Anglican Bishop of Gippsland, John McInytre, pointed out "How bizarre that the followers of Jesus Christ would oppose, and ask for exemptions from, a legal instrument that has at its heart a declaration of the dignity and value of every human life and the basic rights of every person. Jesus of all people, would champion an affirmation of fundamental human rights, which especially benefits marginalised groups in society and those least able to protect themselves."
Christians, at least those who are not hypocritical, who "hatred is wrong, but we can disapprove of someone's lifestyle but still respect the person", should not have any concern about employing a person in secular tasks even if they do disapprove of a person's 'lifestyle'. That would be respect.
It all rather reminds me of Ghandi's experience with so-called Christians.
http://jmm.aaa.net.au/articles/552.htm
Our greenhouse gas emissions are increasing!
According to the last accounts, Australia's greenhouse gases are increasing, and we are more than 10 years off 2020! According to Rudd, climate change was the great moral issue and challenge of our time. His strong stance on this issue was a stark contrast to Howards, but there has been little done except talk and postering. It is not surprising Penny Wong has had to de-link population growth from emission levels! There is no chance of having reduced emissions by 2020 if we are increasing! Our leaders have already surveyed the public, and their interest in this topic has subsided! How very convenient polls can be!
Ringwood facing same problems as Camberwell
Ringwood is facing the same problem...
leader-news.whereilive.com.au/news/story/tower-takes-root
The government is totally ignoring our council's concerns, Outrageous!.
How are we to fix this problem?
Limits to growth do exist.
Spot on (!) - the state of rapid population growth leaves me very depressed. The business/political lobby that insists we need population growth to cope with the aging population proves that the same lobby is littered with self-serving idiots. Blind Freddie can see that all that does (along with destroying the country) is put off that "problem" for another 25 years when suddenly it will be many times worse. Are they going to insist then on increased immigration and baby bonuses to solve that problem? Limits to growth do exist.
There must be some absolutes somewhere
It is not about "discrimination" but about values. We can't have a value-free society as no one would be free to have ethical and moral opinions. A saw-mill owner would not be welcomed as a member of a conservation group, and a butcher a member of animal liberation! Organisations who do not support gay unions or abortions should not be forced to employ them if they do not support their ethos. It's not about hatred or vilification, but about supporting values. If fact, as Christians, hatred is wrong, but we can disapprove of someone's lifestyle but still respect the person. All parts of a body have different functions but work together for the common aim. The core and non-core roles are all part of the same body and should all support the same aims and ideals.
Why would Christian schools be forced to employ atheist teachers, or doctors to perform abortions when they are contrary to their beliefs? Not everything can be standardised and monopolised to be completely neutral. There must be some absolutes somewhere, and Christianity is about a faith in God and about His Justice and compassion.
As for resumes, it really is a different type of 'discrimination'. However, it is about the practicalities of filtering out prospective employees before honing in on a select few. It is not about country of origin, but about our increasing numbers. Multiculturalism has added to our economic growth and added an interesting mixture to Anglo origins. However, the tide has turned, and we are becoming over-populated, and the inherent problems are seeping through the cracks. We are short of jobs, housing, transport, infrastructures, and our suburbs are suffering from obesity. Without a monoculture as in other high-dense living nations, we are seeing greater violence, rising costs and stress. Our immigration is not beneficial any more, but clearly adding to our woes because our numbers are too high. Our "lucky country" is becoming a distant memory! There are just too many people being added due to our leaders' addiction to growth at all costs! Something must be done to stop the deterioration of Australia. Original Australians are being discriminated against because they are competing with a globalised population for limited jobs.
Fails to point out how easily child's spinal chord could break
Subject was: Strongly Disagree. - JS
As a mother with three young children, I applaud the changes to the law. Every one of them. Many people aren't aware of the issues regarding safe restraint of children. You fail to mention in your article the flexibility of children's spines vs how easily their spinal cords can snap. Under current laws a one year old can sit in just a seatbelt - seatbelts aren't designed for such a lightweight person and odds are that the child would slip out over or under the seatbelt and be thrown from the car.
Regarding the $300 fine for passengers not wearing a seatbelt, this gives young drivers ammunition against their friends - "put your seatbelt on, I can't afford $300."
In favour of universal secularism
Hello Vivienne.. coming in late here, but a couple of comments.
1. Referring to the Australian National University study you ask: "Rather than “racism” it could be that foreigners may have less English skills, overseas experience and qualifications, and cultural differences?" Please compare this with the study in question. Nothing else was changed in the résumés in question except the names of the applicants. To achieve the same number of interviews as someone with an Anglo-Saxon name, an application with a Chinese name had to submit 68% more applications, Middle Easterners 64% more etc.
2. The distinction between core and non-core roles is, in my opinion, appropriate. Freedom of religious practise is not an absolute right (we do not allow sati for example), constrained by universal rights. Under contemporary equal opportunity legislation, there is just prohibition on businesses and non-profit associations discriminating against on sexuality, gender, gender-identity, marital or parental status - so why should religions be according some special extralegal protection particularly if employment or commerce is entirely for secular tasks, rather than religious ceremonies?
On a more tangential issue the incorporation of universal legal protections as constitutional protections is the most effective way to protect individuals from a 'tyranny of the majority'. The entire point of putting items such as freedom of speech as a constitutional protection is to ensure that politicians can't stomp on individual rights.
Dog-free Communities
That's a good idea - provided of course that it's enforced.
It is inevitable that more and more stressed citizens will demand peaceful living circumstances, particularly at night. Adequate sleep is absolutely essential to human health.
One of the most efficient ways to secure peaceful circumstances in our manic dog-obsessed society (part of which now wants dogs in shops and waiters to wait on dogs in restaurants) is through, like you say, dog-free suburbs.
Of the three international petitions I have online and ready for your signatures is the one titled "Dog-free Communities." These online petitions may be accessed via http://www.pebri.net/index_13.htm where you may click the Signature tab at the bottom of each petition to read the comments of others before signing the petitions and leaving your own comments. Comments may be viewed by hovering your mouse over the "View" tab.
These petitions provide a simple, unofficial method wherein you may demonstrate your support for a particular idea.
Peter Bright
Hobart
Tasmania
http://www.pebri.net
California's fire crisis happening here:
Not only are the fires in LA becoming more frequent, but these days they are also less predictable and a lot bigger.
The nearly 251-square-mile blaze in the Angeles National Forest remains at 98 percent containment. Officials said they will hold off until the next rain before declaring it fully contained.
The fire has scorched 160,557 acres, making it the largest fire in modern Los Angeles County history and the 10th largest in California since 1933.
"A changing climate, population growth and a decade-long housing boom has proved to be a combustible mix for the city of Los Angeles" - doesn't this sound awfully familiar? Exactly what is happening in Victoria and across Australia.
Victoria is already the most damaged and cleared of all states. Our Brumby Government is intent on satisfying the demands of land developers by blowing-out further Melbourne's already obese boundaries. This means more concrete, less green wedges, a biting in to National parks and forests and the heating and drying process continues.
We can learn by what is happening overseas, and act now to protect our wonderful country - what was once the 'lucky country'!
However, we have leaders at federal and state levels obsessed by growth at all costs, and this means our ailing ecosystems will be further stressed this coming summer.
A person with a fever is more likely to succumb to an extra blow, just like a stressed environment!
These old trees do not have a monetary value!
These trees are up to 600 years old. Their value is ecological and intrinsic. No value in $$ can justify their destruction. Income and jobs are temporal and temporary. We don't chop up our houses when we need firewood. Destroying these heritage level trees, and protection from climate change, cannot be justified for whatever value! They are PRICELESS so disputing over dollars is irrelevant.
Chainsaw operator should get a proper job that creates wealth
I reckon that gutless whinging chainsaw operator or truck driver or whatever he is should stop taking subsidies and handouts from the government (Vicforests - never made a profit - any real company and you would have been out of a job years ago), get an education and get a proper job. Or at least stand up for something he believes. Other than the front bar of the pub.
Our greenhouse gas emissions are increasing!
In Australia, Emissions increased 3.7 per cent this year compared to the previous year, which put them at 7 per cent above 1990 levels. (Parliamentary Library) This is interesting, considering that Kevin Rudd committed himself to cut emission down by 5% on 1990 levels. The “white paper” on climate change sets a target for emissions cuts of just 5% by 2020.
Most of the increase in carbon dioxide comes from burning of fossil fuels such as oil, coal and natural gas for energy, and from deforestation.
Cows, sheep and other ruminant animals ‘burp’ methane into the air. Rice paddies also generate methane. Other sources of methane are landfills, burning vegetation, coal mines and natural gas fields.
Nitrous oxide concentrations are increasing because of changes to the way in which we use land, from fertiliser use, from some industrial processes, and from burning vegetation.
According to a 2006 UN report, cattle-rearing generates more global warming greenhouse gases, as measured in CO2 equivalent, than transportation.
“The environmental costs per unit of livestock production must be cut by one half, just to avoid the level of damage worsening beyond its present level,” it warns.
Australia has the highest proportion of livestock to people in the world, and globally we are the highest exporters of coal. By 2008-09, we had 232,090 plus immigrants and 629,000 temporary residents come here on work and study visas, with many hoping to transfer to permanent residency. Australia's population is growing at record levels.
The stalemate of the ETS is part of a political game. Corporate greed has won out over ensuring a liveable planet. Kevin Rudd and our State governments are quite willing to obey their masters, the powers of the mass markets, instead of ensuring a safe nation for future generations. Would Turnbull, or the Liberals, be willing to face the real source of emissions and not just burden the public with taxes to appear that the challenge of climate change is being met?
More population growth propaganda from The Age
Another Age article about the false dichotomy of ever expanding suburbia or densifcation of existing suburbs, no mention of the elephant in the room, population growth.
Also need to note that another argument regarding the need for high population density is that public transport is nonviable. This argument is becoming quite common as part of the justification for higher density.
It should be noted that before WW2 Melbourne had the same basic rail-line infrastructure it has today, the population was a lot smaller, but public transport use was a lot higher, especially in off-peak times (The last major rail line built was Glen Waverly line completed in 1930)
Other government policies which have encouraged car use over the last 60+ years have been far greater factors in reducing public transport use. Population density is not even a secondary issue in this set of factors, but I think the argument is used to bolster the "green" credentials of the person who uses this excuse.
"Sprawl of the wild"
Mr Holding! Stop growth if you want to save water
Holding, we'll cut back when you do
A STUDY has revealed that an extra million people living in Melbourne will ''end in chaos'' (The Age, 10/10). It appears that Melbourne's roads will not cope with the increase in population.
Then there was the article about water needs (''Spring rain a fillip for dam levels'') and Tim Holding's intention to extract 10 billion litres from the Thomson River. He went on to implore that households cut back on water consumption.
I find this rather disingenuous, given that Mr Holding is a member of John Brumby's pro-population growth Government. Water savings by Melburnians are being squandered by the State Government's profligate approach to population growth. Any surplus saved water should be used to conserve Melbourne's parks and gardens.
Instead, the amenity of our urban and suburban environment is diminished by the growth-at-any-cost attitude of the Brumby and Rudd governments.
Victorians do their best by saving water, reducing carbon dioxide emissions and recycling. These efforts will prove futile when measured against an increased total use of resources due to population increase.
Tim Holding's exhortation that households cut back should be matched with an appropriate policy on population.
Nicholas Howe, Malvern
Fletcher Memorial for Anna Bligh?
There is said to be a lot of botox in the Bligh flesh. Could be dangerous for the Russians to ingest.
She's carrying a lot of parasites as well - from the construction and infrastructure sectors.
It's sad really. She's gone completely feral and is causing uncontrollable growth.
Is there a humane solution, I wonder?
Pink Floyd once suggested the creation of the Fletcher Memorial Home for Incurable Wasters.
Just a suggestion.
Words below:
The Fletcher Memorial Home (Waters)
Take all your overgrown infants away somewhere
And build them a home, a little place of their own.
The Fletcher Memorial
Home for Incurable Tyrants and Kings.
And they can appear to themselves every day
On closed circuit T.V.
To make sure they're still real.
It's the only connection they feel.
"Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome, Reagan and Haig,
Mr. Begin and friend, Mrs. Thatcher, and Paisly,
"Hello Maggie!"
Mr. Brezhnev and party.
"Scusi dov'è il bar?"
The ghost of McCarthy,
The memories of Nixon.
"Who's the bald chap?"
"Good-bye!"
And now, adding colour, a group of anonymous latin-
American meat packing glitterati.
Did they expect us to treat them with any respect?
They can polish their medals and sharpen their
Smiles, and amuse themselves playing games for awhile.
Boom boom, bang bang, lie down you're dead.
Safe in the permanent gaze of a cold glass eye
With their favorite toys
They'll be good girls and boys
In the Fletcher Memorial Home for colonial
Wasters of life and limb.
Is everyone in?
Are you having a nice time?
Now the final solution can be applied.
Bathurst rally excuse to kill kangaroos
This episode of killing has been going on for months and is now finished.
The whole excuse of safety is absolutely ridiculous as it cannot ensure any safety whatsoever -
unless they kill each and every kangaroo, so how in anyway does this help with their perceived safety problem?
140 kangaroos have been killed just to show that something has been done and the box can be
ticked completed - that is all.
Fiona Corke
Disgust at Anna Bligh's apparent hatred of our wildlife
Activists have worked hard voluntarily to give advice to the Russians about the atrocities of the commercial kangaroo killing industry. They have proved it is not "humane" or hygienic, or even sustainable. However, Bligh is quite prepared to spend taxpayers' funds to simply NEGATE their efforts for a few million dollars. She clearly is a wildlife hater, and hopefully she will seek political asylum - if the Russians would want her!
Cruel, corrupt Victorian Government
Yes, the Victorian government is cruel and serves the interests of the rich and materialistic, turning its back on democracy and decency.
Sheila Newman, population sociologist
home page
We can't rely on Nature to provide all the water!
Nature's bounty has been generous with heavy rains this September. Even so, Victorian Water Minister Tim Holding is preaching to the people of Victoria to be "realistic" about our water supplies! Our water storages were 95 per cent-plus full in the mid-1990s. However, Melbourne's population in 1995 was estimated as 3,243,000. It has recently surpassed 4 million. Melbourne is expanding by an unprecedented 90,000 people a year, or more than 1700 a week. Melbourne’s population is growing and will be home to five million people faster than previously anticipated.
Melbourne is projected to grow by an average 1.2% per year to 6.8 million in 2056. At this rate of expansion, it would be “realistic” to increase our water supplies by at least the same rate as population growth! Relying on Nature to provide increasing water supplies at a time of prolonged drought will is not realistic!
Our coastlines will need to be littered with desalination plants, and our water costs will continue to escalate. The population growth phenomenon is cruel, corrupt and unrealistic and it will lock the public into debt, even for water, an essential for life.
Disputes claims about Kangaroo killing industry