Comments

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

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.

After reading Naomi Klein's "The Shock Doctrine" of 2007 I began to realise that we are entitled to assume the very worst of the elites now in control of humankind's destiny -- that they are willing to deliberately inflict death, destruction and abject poverty upon millions of fellow human beings, the environment and future generations to satiate their own rapacious greed. The wilful decision of Australia's elites to increase our population further confirms that view (even though Naomi Klein, herself, unfortunately, largely avoids confronting that 'politically incorrect' question). All the arguments for population growth have long ago, been shown up, exactly as our common sense and intution would have told us, to be fraudulent hogwash. There is absolutely no possible way that adding millions more to this dry continent could possibly do anything for this country as a whole except to make its circumstances worse[1]. In the distant past, it was possible that addition of people would have made our industrial economy more effecient, if not more ecologically sustainable, but that point has long since past. Instead (as I have written a number of times elsewhere) the majority of this country loses out in at least four ways. 1. there is less wealth to go around, so each of us on average must become poorer; 2. the additional damge to the environment and excessive consumption of non-renewable natural resources will cause there to be even less wealth to go around for greater numbers of people, that is assuming that it does not lead to outright ecological collapse; 3. ineffeciencies of scale that cause the cost of provision of goods and services to increase on a per-capita basis once the optimum population has been achieved 4. the transfer of more wealth from the majority to the minority most most dramatically through escalating rents and housing prices, that are driving many formeraly prosperous Australians into poverty. On top of all that the free market economic dogma that prevents Governments for intervening effectively in the economy causes us to miss out on what economies of scale would be possible through increased population. That those in control are seeking to bring this about is absolute confirmation that their interests are antithetical to the interests of this country as a whole and that their corrupt grip on this country's levers of power needs to be removed. Footnotes 1. Just possibly, arguably, more people could be fitted in if we adopted radical measures to fix the environment such as Natural Sequence Farming and consumed natural resources less profligately, but the country is headed in the opposite direction in that regard, too.

I don't know that their hearts would be in it.

The industrial scale of agriculture to feed a massive number of people is problematic to say the least. It would be OK to take some of the milk from a lactating cow to give to a couple of people but to make that cow sacrifice ALL its milk to supply maybe hundreds or thousands of people is out of proportion and cruel. The sacrifice of its young and the need to keep the cow in calf annually is obviously detrimental and a in itself a symptom of the unsustainable scale and nature of our agriculture and way of life.

Incredibly, the Murdoch Newsmedia considers population decline in clearly over-populated Japan as a threat, rather than a potential salvation. Here's Greg Sheridan writing in "Survival rests on social revolution" in the Australian of 3 Sep 09:

The central crisis of Japan today is not economic, much less military. It is demographic. Put simply, the Japanese are disappearing. The demographic projections are naturally a little imprecise, but the consensus figure is that Japan's population will decline by one-quarter by 2050, to just 95 million people. And something not far short of 50 per cent of those people will be aged 60 or older.

...

... At this stage the numerical population decline is small. But this is like a toboggan going down a ski slope. It starts off slow but gathers pace at an ever accelerating rate.

...

To reverse this decline, Japan needs to do three things, each of which would constitute a social revolution.

First, it needs to embrace immigration; second, adopt all policies possible to encourage the birth of children; third, redefine the place of women in Japanese society.

...

Second, Japan must start having children again. The birth dearth in Japan has many deep cultural causes, but it also has many superficial financial causes. Notwithstanding Japan's fiscal dire straits, Hatoyama is surely right to offer a generous baby bonus cum child allowance.

The third policy that Sheridan prescribes is "a fundamental change in the role and status of women in Japan" that would effectively allow them to participate in the workforce in greater numbers.

For years, Australians, who considered themselves politically progressive looked forward to the breaking down of barriers preventing the participation of women in the workforce.

But it has become a double edged sword.

Today, at least two incomes, rather than one, have become necessary for meet the basic living expenses, particularly housing.

On the one hand, many women have gained, through participation in the workforce the equality of status that seemed unachievable, when they were confined to the role of mother and housekeeper, but on the other they find themselves without as much time and energy to care for their children.

So, it is not altogether clear who actually gained from the same feminist revolution that Greg Sheridan is now prescribing for Japan.

Hi Vivienne, I thoroughly agree with the main drift of your article. What you say about Japan is also largely true, though you paint a slightly more utopian picture from the one I see here at ground zero. One thing is that we are looking forward to seeing what the new government's position on population is going to be. The LDP for a long time has pushed the policy that population decline is a BAD THING and forced the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare to implement population growth policies such as subsidies for larger families (though much of the population sees this as a rather feeble King Canute trying to reverse the 'tide' of lower birthrates). Given the prognosis on global food and energy problems it is absolutely crucial that the Japanese grasp firmly the notion that population decline is a GOOD THING. As it is practically everywhere now.

And they say the same thing about sub-atomic particles! Sheila Newman, population sociologist home page

I would prefer to pay people to either do nothing, stand on their heads or do whatever they do well than to destroy the environment in the name of "jobs".

From the base level of debate offered by the supporters of the rally and critical of any criticism only on the basis of 'how dare anyone criticise us wanting a bit of fun' I relegate them to the generalisation of being petrol heads with a skin full of Jack Daniels or Jim Beam and the intelligence of Tolkien or Warhammer 40,000 Orks. In doubt? I quote the asinine rodomontade from above: "Yes human babies are important. We would not even dare let them be anywhere near the dust, So why let lesser creatures suffer for our profit? and ignorance? Fun and attitude that says "bugger the planet I want racing cars!'' Q.E.D.

Meaning, 'of the people, by the people, for the people'? Sheila Newman, population sociologist home page

So if we can't trust The Age or The Sydney Morning Herald, or the Courier Mail in this sea of bias journalism and propaganda, where can we find worthy journalism in Australia to set as aspiring benchmarks?