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What is Anarchism? In his famous book “Alice in Wonderland”, the English writer Lewis Carroll profoundly challenges us to “think” about the power of words. His debate between Humpty Dumpty and Alice over the question of definitions goes like this: “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in a rather scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean. Neither more nor less.” “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.” “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “who is to be master. That is all.” (1) Definitions and even more, historical interpretations of them are very enlightening. If we truly open our minds and investigate them, they can tell us a great deal about where we have come from, the degree to which we have become chained to the limitations of our past experiences and after careful consideration, can provide us with “sign-posts”, a potential guide to the barriers that stand in the way of our imagination, especially in our pursuit of what “could-be”. Open any dictionary and you will find definitions of “Anarchy” that contain restrictions to all of these possibilities. Anarchy: “A lack of established government or control, usually leading to disorder”, or, “a general state of disorder or uproar.” Anarchist: “A person who believes that all organized authority should be abolished in the interests of individual freedom.” When we compare these definitions with the original Greek meaning of the word, we can easily see that these are not definitions, but that they are simply interpretations that have developed over time through our ill reasoned experiences and critically, our dogged acceptance of those experiences as the “only” potential reality. Greek: “An” – without + “Arkhos” – a ruler. There is no suggestion here that “Anarchy” is synonymous with disorder or uproar. There is also no suggestion that individual freedom, as implied in the dictionary definitions, must therefore by its very nature, have little regard for one’s personal responsibility to the “whole”. Most Anarchists believe in the absence of “rulers”, not the absence of values or order. The dictionary definitions, used extensively by Governments, the Media and Corporations around the World, limit our thinking and keep us chained to their dominant ideology. “The growing power of a soulless political bureaucracy which supervises and safeguards the life of Human’s from the cradle to the grave, is putting ever greater obstacles in the way of unified co-operation between Human beings and crushing out every possibility of new development. Just as for the various systems of religion, God is everything and Human’s nothing, so for this modern political ideology, the State (and its economics) is everything and the Human (and the environment) nothing. And just as behind the will of God there always lay hidden the will of privileged minorities, so today there hides behind the will of the State (and its economics) only the selfish interests of those who feel called to interpret this will in their own sense and impose it on the people.”(2) (Additions in brackets are the Authors) Why is Anarchy misunderstood? “People are free only if they can choose, and they can choose only if they know enough to compare.” (Anon) Anarchists do not accept authority, and as a consequence, they will not partake in any particular action because they are commanded to. Through a process of direct engagement, Anarchists become personally responsible for examining, through intelligent investigation, contemplation, discussion and consensus, the reasoning behind any action they may take before taking it. This is contrary to most of today’s Society who have been led to believe that it is in their best interests to abnegate that effort and the critical nature of it to others, namely, Governments, God’s, Scientists, Experts or Leaders. The Anarchist approach demands a commitment to lifetime personal growth and maturity, a “growing away” from the historical reliance on either matriarchal or patriarchal (current) Social systems, the “parental” structures that carry with them the false promises, the supposed solutions that will fix all those nasty things that we are mistakenly led to believe we are powerless to personally do anything about; our present Environmental crisis being just one example. Anarchists understand that in order to be empowered, we need to trust in those values that exist deep within us, the instinctual knowledge and inherent wisdom to know what’s right, just and fair. These are not “parental” morals or value judgments and as such don’t require external authorities, ruler’s or god’s to oversee or enforce them. They develop best in Human Beings only through true freedom but most critically, gain profound clarity when that freedom is repeatedly challenged by one’s own deeply felt, personal responsibility to the “whole”. True freedom carries with it great responsibility. When we hand this responsibility over to others, in exchange for false freedoms, we detach ourselves from truly understanding the impact of our actions and we deny ourselves the opportunity to learn from both the sadness and the joy that are uniquely a part of our connection to the “whole”. We are encouraged instead, by those we entrust, to seek “happiness” and “fulfillment” through specialized careers, material consumption, having more babies, finding romance and donating to charities, and our search, never truly realized, simply erodes our natural spirituality (non religious) and connectedness to our instinctual values, each other and our environment ever further. Despite this, it is, amazingly, the Anarchist approach to life that is frequently labeled as idealistic. The majority of Society has been led to see Anarchists as little more than a bunch of dreamers: individuals who have no sense of the “true reality” of the World. This is because, unlike most of Society, Anarchists do not accept prejudiced ideas, that is, ideas that are accepted without question, free examination or prior discussion, the “Growth Economy” being a prime example. The acceptance by Society of “life” as it has been sold to them from birth, leads to an unconscious day to day existence, underpinned by a belief that life “as they know it” appears for all intents and purposes to have existed in that form forever, a given just like oxygen. Therefore anybody who challenges or questions this state of affairs comes to be seen as “unreasonable” or “unrealistic”, because to most of Society, one is only “reasonable” or “realistic” when one acts in conformity and accordance with the prejudiced ideas that are accepted without question by that society. In contrast, Anarchists believe that “reasonable individuals are not those who act, as their contemporaries, in conformity to prejudices, but are those who reserve to themselves the faculty of weighing on all occasions the motives, which will determine their actions.”(3) Anarchy and Direct Action When Anarchists uncover injustice, they are committed to taking direct action against it. Anarchists do not see reform as an option. The reason why is clear. Despite widespread opposition in Australia to the invasion of Iraq, reports like this one below, continue to reveal the arrogance of Governments when it comes to reform. “Under Howard, the defense budget rose from $A10.6 billion in 1995-1996 to $22 billion in the 2007-2008 budget—taking the total to 9.3 percent of government outlays and 2 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). Australia is currently one of the 15 largest military spenders in the world, with annual expenditure that exceeds the combined military spending of all 10 members of the Association of South East Asian Nations—Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei, Singapore, the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Burma. Labor’s 2007 “Plan for Defense”, released for the November 24 election, pledged to not only maintain the defense budget at this level, but matched the Howard government’s promise to increase it by 3 percent in real terms every year until 2016. Defense is the only ministry that has been exempted from Labor’s “razor-gang”, which requires every federal department to slash 2 percent of its spending.”(4) Direct action in this case would quite literally mean “putting your money where your mouth is”. This link will take you through to a great example of somebody who is doing just that. Whilst he is not an Anarchist, he has adopted an Anarchistic approach via War Tax Resistance. http://www.sniggle.net/Experiment/index.php So how do we develop a more Anarchistic Society? The issues surrounding just why it is that Society acts in conformity in the way that it does are complex and beyond the scope of this introductory piece on Anarchism. We hope to delve into these reasons in a future article, which will include, amongst other topics, areas such as the development of the Human brain. We are given an insight into one potential area of change, by Clive Bell in his thought provoking 1927 essay, “Civilization”, where he examines the value of a liberal education. (Education we use here in its truest sense, that being to “educe” or to “bring out”, which is diametrically opposed to our current system which aims to produce Corporate or Growth Economy “ready” individuals). “From a sense of values comes that desire for, and belief in, a Liberal Education which no (truly) civilized age has been without. The richest and fullest life obtainable, a life that contains the maximum of vivid and exquisite experiences, is the end of every civilized man’s desire. Because he desires it he aims at complete self development and complete self expression: and these are to be achieved only by those who have learnt to think and feel and discriminate, to let the intellect play freely round every subject, and the emotions respond appropriately to all stimuli. Knowledge in addition is needed; for without knowledge the intellect remains the slave of prejudice and superstition, while the emotions sicken on a monotonous and cannibalistic diet. The civilized man desires an education that shall be as direct a means as possible to what alone is good as an end. He cultivates his powers of thinking and feeling, pursues truth and acquires knowledge, not for any practical value that these may possess, but for themselves, or – that I may distinguish him sharply from the date-collector or competition-winner – for their power of revealing the rich and complex possibilities of life. The Philistine, wanting the sense of values, expects education to show him the way to wealth and power, things which are only valuable in so far as they are more or less remote means to that ultimate good whereas a liberal education leads direct. Liberal education teaches us to enjoy life; practical education to acquire “things” that may enable us or someone else to enjoy it.” (5) This passage reveals the great dilemma of our time. On the one hand, Clive Bell promotes the value of deep questioning, thinking and free examination and on the other, signals clearly through the use of the word “Philistine”, a belief that only “certain” individuals can attain a higher level liberal education. In contrast, Anarchists believe that the vast majority of our Society can attain this level of education under the right conditions, indeed, a small number of Human Societies have achieved this in the past; Clive Bell does to his full credit, discuss them in his essay. Unfortunately, from the 1920’s on, elite intellectuals became more prominent and the belief that only “certain” individuals should be doing the “thinking” for our Society developed with them. We are now faced with the situation where every 3 to 4 years we “elect” these select few, along with their intellectual advisory bureaucracies, to do our thinking for us and in between we have little or no say in what takes place. This apparently is Democracy. Many intellectuals today will argue that the problems that Society faces are simply too complex for individuals within that Society to understand and act on and as a consequence, they shouldn’t be involved. This potential outcome was raised by Aldous Huxley in his 1932 classic “Brave New World”, where he vibrantly outlined the developing Utopia, the select few do the thinking and make the decisions whilst the vast majority are kept busy in an orgy of materialistic and physical consumption. Whilst we have not reached the full extent of the utopia described in Huxley’s book, we are well on our way. There is already a dominant belief throughout Society that only Governments and external authorities can do anything about the problems we face and our current level of materialistic consumption needs no further explanation. Over time, Governments and their attendant elite intellectuals have become obsessed with ideology and “the one right way”, the means to ensure the ultimate end. It will therefore come as no surprise to readers that Governments and elite intellectuals do not like the Anarchist approach. Noam Chomsky explains in the following passage just how the intellectuals go about maintaining their powerful position. “On the rare occasions in which I have an opportunity to discuss these issues, whether in print or in person with people in the media or the academic professions, I often find not so much disagreement as an inability to hear. I have found all sorts of strange illusions about, what say my attitude was toward the Vietnam War, because elite intellectuals often simply cannot perceive that one could hold the opinions that I do hold. These are very hard barriers to overcome. There’s a complicated system of illusions and self-deception that are given framework for discussion and debate. And if you don’t happen to take part in that system of illusions and self-deception, what you say is incomprehensible.” He then goes on to explain just why it is that Anarchist perspectives are so threatening to them. “There has not been a very substantial Anarchist intelligentsia. Anarchism is not a position that appeals to elite intellectuals…it does not appeal to their Class interests.”(6) Power, as we know, finds much fertile ground in Class distinctions. In conclusion An Anarchist approach to life, one that continually strives to seek the truth through free examination, investigation, reason, contemplation, engagement in decision- making and direct action against injustice, offers us far greater potential than that of simply being led. We did not ask the hard questions in 1945 or as a result, take direct action to intervene before the dropping of Atomic Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and because of this we remained ignorant to the fact that only weeks before this appalling event, a vote was taken in the USA on the following question: “Which of the following procedures comes closest to your choice as the way in which any new weapon that we might develop should be used in the Japanese War? (Results in brackets) (1) Use them in the manner that is from the Military point of view most effective in bringing about a prompt Japanese surrender at minimum cost to our own armed forces. (23 votes – 15%) (2) Give a Military demonstration in Japan, to be followed by a renewed opportunity for surrender before full use of the weapon. (69 votes – 46%) (3) Give an experimental demonstration in the USA with representatives of Japan present followed by a new opportunity for surrender before full use of the weapon. (39 votes – 26%) (4) Withhold military use of the weapon but make public experimental demonstration of the effectiveness. (16 votes – 11%) (5) Maintain as secret as possible all developments of our new weapon and refrain from using them in this War. (3 votes – 2%) “Unfortunately the voting, in which 150 persons participated, took place without any previous debate. Consequently, the greatest number of votes were cast for the second alternative suggesting a Military demonstration in Japan. But after the first two bombs had been dropped on the centre of the town of Hiroshima and on Nagasaki, most of the 69 voters explained that they had taken a “Military demonstration in Japan” to mean an attack on purely Military objectives, not on targets occupied also, in fact, mainly by civilians.”(7) By the end of 1945, “the bombs killed as many as 140,000 people in Hiroshima and 80,000 in Nagasaki, roughly half on the days of the bombings. Since then, thousands more have died from injuries or illness attributed to exposure to radiation released by the bombs. In both cities, the overwhelming majority of the dead were civilians.”(8) We did not ask the hard questions of those who supposedly “knew best” before this needless war, neither did the civilians in Germany, England, Italy, France, America or Japan or people of a myriad of other countries involved. And to this day we are still not asking the hard questions. If we truly wish to change that, we need new ways of looking at life. Anarchy could be the means through which we eventually develop far greater congruence between what we know to be right, just and fair and the actions we take in our everyday lives. It holds the promise of breaking the shackles from those who would have us follow. In an Anarchist World of course, that choice would be entirely up to you! (1) “Alice in Wonderland” – Lewis Carroll (2) “The Reproduction of Daily Life” – Rudolph Rocker (3) “What is Anarchism – Who are the Anarchists” - Australian Branch of the Groupes D'Etudes Scientifiques, Ralph Carterer, Sydney, 1913. (4) http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/dec2007/defe-d13.shtml (5) “Civilization” – Clive Bell, Pelican Books, 1927 (6) “The Chomsky Reader” – Noam Chomsky. (7) “Brighter than a thousand suns” – Robert Jungk, Penguin Special 1960 (8) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki

Date: 27-9-1999, Adjournment - Immigration (Full references at end of this excerpt from Hansard)

So, maybe it wasn't a maiden speech, but here it is - quite feisty and an historic and ironic document, considering where the Liberal Party later took us with immigration numbers and now the Rudd Labor government's massive and undemocratic population push:

Senator MINCHIN (South Australia) (7.20 p.m.) —I wish to speak tonight on a matter which I regard as a serious deficiency in Australian public life; that is, our lack of any population policy. I am moved to speak on this subject by a recent news report on immigration to Australia in 1994-95. The Adelaide Advertiser reported on 7 September 1995 that figures released by the Bureau of Immigration, Multicultural and Population Research showed a 25 per cent increase in immigration from the previous year. That is an extraordinary increase in one year. What is also extraordinary is that it was largely ignored by the media and by the parliament. It does appear that immigration is, in fact, a no-go area in Australia.

There were 87,428 immigrants in 1994-95 compared with 69,768 in the previous year. The bureau notes that nearly half the immigrants are still going to New South Wales—43 per cent to New South Wales; nearly twice as many as go to the next highest state, Victoria, which received 22 per cent. I think that is quite interesting in the light of New South Wales Premier Carr's recent comments on the population problems, as he sees them, in New South Wales.

The concern raised by the latest figures is the fact that such a big increase in the immigration intake has occurred while unemployment in this country remains so high. We had an MPI on that subject today. Unemployment is still at 8.3 per cent—a very high level. There are still nearly three-quarters of a million Australians who cannot get work but who want it. The economy is slowing down. It is being deliberately slowed down by the government. So the likelihood is that unemployment will at some point start to rise again. Even the government's budget, which one must say is an optimistic document, admits that unemployment will not be less than eight per cent by June next year.

Yet, in the face of all that—three-quarters of a million unemployed—the government is accelerating the immigration program. I am not talking about whether there is immigration or not; I am talking about the pace of the increase in immigration. To have a 25 per cent increase in one year really makes no sense to the Australian community in the face of the very high level of unemployment. It particularly does not make much sense when you note—as I do not think many Australians do—that the unemployment rate for migrants who have arrived in the last five years is 22 per cent. That means that almost one in four of recent migrants who wish to obtain a job cannot get a job and are unemployed.

In fact, the unemployment rate for all migrants who arrived in the last 20 years—that is, since 1976—is above the national unemployment rate of 8.3 per cent. Yet, in the face of all that, the government is proposing another increase. We see that in 1995-96, the current financial year, the government has set aside an extra 14,000 places, which will take immigration back over the 100,000 mark. I just do not know how the government can justify such a rapid increase in immigration when we still have three-quarters of a million Australians who cannot find work. I really wonder what the trade unions think of all this.

The real issue, in my view, is that the government is threatening what is fragile community support for a big immigration program by this sort of rapid increase in the intake. I note that the community has really already given up on Labor on this issue of immigration. The Newspoll survey published on 20 September, which sought the attitudes of people to the handling of various issues by Labor and the coalition, showed that voters think that the coalition can handle the issue of immigration better than Labor.

That is not a surprising finding when you look at what has been an extraordinary roller-coaster ride on immigration under Labor—incredible fluctuations in numbers year by year. The net migration in Labor's first year, 1984, was 49,000; by 1988, only four years later, it was 149,000—an extraordinary increase in four years. In 1989 it was 157,000; in 1990 it went back to 124,000; and in 1991 it went down to 86,000. It is just like the big dipper at Luna Park.

Former finance minister Peter Walsh was very revealing in his book about the way this government conducts immigration policy. He noted in his book that it took five years of this government before it even had a major debate on immigration. It said:

Early in 1988, the first major cabinet debate on immigration took place.

He then says, in looking back over the five years at that point:

Thus three sequences of blow outs and cave-ins boosted arrivals from 70 to 115 thousand. The next year—

that is 1989—

it blew out again to 140 thousand. Apart from the unplanned and unintended doubling of numbers in four years, the composition at the instigation of the ethnic mafia, also changed towards `family reunion', which debased migrant employability. Frequent Ministerial changes—four Ministers in the first five years—did not facilitate the development of coherent on-going policy.

An understatement, if ever there was one.

This is the hopeless adhockery of immigration policy which former Labor minister Peter Walsh complained of and which Barry Jones in his own report—a very interesting report on Australia's population carrying capacity—complained of. The report is by the National President of the Labor Party, and the committee has a majority of Labor members on it. Its recommendation No. 2 is well worth reading in the light of what I regard as this ad hoc approach to immigration. Mr Jones's committee recommended:

The Australian Government should adopt a population policy which explicitly sets out options for long term population change, in preference to the existing situation where a de facto population policy emerges as a consequence of year by year decisions on immigration intake taken in an ad hoc fashion, such decisions being largely determined by the state of the economy in the particular year and with little consideration of the long term effects.

There is your own national president—the national president of the party in government—describing his government's policy as ad hoc. I strongly support that committee's recommendation. I note that it was a recommendation from a majority of government members. It is about time the government responded to that report in full, not just the interim report we have had.

I want to indicate tonight my personal support for committee option IV in looking at the future for Australia. Option IV was for a stable population in the possible range of 17 million to 23 million, which the committee notes has `strong community support'. I do not think anyone in Australia can read Tim Flannery's outstanding book The Future Eaters and not recognise the significant environmental limits to Australia's population carrying capacity—that is really what was being referred to in the Jones report.

Very interestingly, New South Wales Labor Premier Bob Carr referred to this matter in May. I want to quote what he said about all this. He said:

. . . the debate ought to be about the carrying capacity of the continent—a continent that has lousy soils, fragile vegetation and depleted and degraded river systems.

I do not often agree with Labor premiers, but I must agree with Mr Carr. I suspect that, like me, Premier Carr has read The Future Eaters and been moved by what he read. What was very sad was the condemnation that Mr Carr incurred right across Australia. It was a disgraceful example of the sort of intimidation and intolerance—

Senator Bob Collins interjecting—

Senator MINCHIN —Certainly. The criticism of Mr Carr was not confined to people outside the Liberal Party. I condemn everyone who attacked Mr Carr for making a very sensible contribution to what is an important debate in Australia, and a debate we have to have. It is very sad that in Australia, allegedly a free democracy, a bloke like Bob Carr cannot make those sorts of comments without being attacked from all sides.

In my view, both major parties, including my own, need to recognise the need for a population policy and need to recognise that the immigration program that the government, of whatever colour, presides over must be determined within the context of that population policy, which, as Mr Jones says, is not the case at the moment. The population policy that the government has, whether it is Labor or coalition, must recognise the real constraints on our continent's carrying capacity.

Here are the references for the speech:

Immigration, Database, Senate Hansard, Date 27-09-1995, Source Senate Parl No.
Electorate SA, Page 1608, Adjournment, System ID, chamber/hansards/1995-09-27/0175

http://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;adv=;db=CHAMBER;group=;holdingType=;id=chamber%2Fhansards%2F1995-09-27%2F0175;orderBy=_fragment_number;page=;query=(Dataset%3Ahansards%20SearchCategory_Phrase%3A%22senate%22)%20Context_Phrase%3A%22adjournment%22%20Electorate_Phrase%3A%22sa%22%20Speaker_Phrase%3A%22senator%20minchin%22;querytype=;rec=4;resCount=

Sheila Newman, population sociologist
home page

Okay, still haven't located that parliamentary speech, but here's some more evidence of his historic outlook, which should be of interest:

This is from Katherine Betts and Michael Guilding, “The Growth lobby and Australia’s immigration policy”People and Place, vol. 14, no. 4, 2006, page 45
http://www.population.org.au/issues/Growth_lobby_and_immigration.pdf
Though immigration had become very unpopular in the early 1990s it was not an issue in the March 1996 election. After its victory, however, the Howard Government embarked on a program of immigration reform, including a reduction in numbers.24 By 1999, public hostility to immigration had eased considerably.25 But the moderate decrease in migrant numbers meant that business leaders, long accustomed to high immigration as a matter of course, found themselves in new territory. The advent of a non-Labor, presumably pro-business, government which reduced the intake in fair economic times was novel.

Disquiet in business circles was apparent in a 2001 interview conducted with Senator Nick Minchin, Industry Minister and a member of Howard's cabinet. The journalist, Maxine McKew, reported that Minchin was a convinced immigration skeptic and very aware of business pressure on the Government to increase migrant intake:

But he [Minchin] parts company [with business] on a key point that's advanced by many corporate leaders and industry bodies-the need to dramatically increase our population. Can a market of a mere 20 million, it's argued, ever really be taken seriously? Over and over the message from business is the same. Entrepreneurial cultures welcome immigrants on the basis of a simple proposition: who knows where the talent might be? Minchin clearly is unimpressed. 'With great respect to business, they speak, not unnaturally, completely out of selfinterest.
They want more people to sell more widgets to. But there is a world of 6 billion customers out there, so I say: “Get out there and sell to the world”'. It's time, Minchin says, that Australian business 'stopped trying to bully governments and the Australian people into a view that we should double our population'. This must go down a treat with assorted CEOs, I suggest. 'Whenever I have this debate with businessmen, I say, for God's sake, read Tim Flannery's The Future Eaters.
The fact is there are severe physical limitations in terms of the population we can sustain on this continent'. You sound like … Bob Carr. 'Bob and I have a lot in common on this issue. But it is all there in Tim's book. We made this mistake with European colonisation, we all tried to believe we could live like Europeans and fare like Europeans. But this ain't Europe.
It's a desert'.

Sheila Newman, population sociologist
home page

Found this one, which demonstrates his purported attitude:

http://www.csiro.au/files/mediarelease/mr1999/FutureMakersFutureTakers.htm
Media Release - Ref 1999/60 - Mar 31 , 1999
Future Makers, Future Takers: Life in Australia 2050

There are three political strategies, and three alternative routes on the road-map to Australia's future.

That's the choice offered by a CSIRO scientist in a new book that attempts to give a rational guide to getting Australia to the year 2050 in good shape.

"Today's Australians have to consider the big choices which will ensure that our grand-children have a good quality of life," says Minister for Science and Technology Senator Nick Minchin.

"Should we be going down an economic prosperity path using a strategy of self-regulated markets and small government? Or should we be following the 'conservative development' path of active intervention by a strong central government?

"Or the third alternative, 'post-materialism', putting a cap on development and the economy, and building political and business structures which are based on stakeholder participation and collaboration."

Senator Minchin today launched the new book by Dr Doug Cocks of CSIRO Wildlife and Ecology, Future Makers, Future Takers. Dr Cocks creates three hypothetical political parties - the Conservative Development Party, the Economic Growth Party, and the Post-Materialism Party. He gives each party a detailed policy platform, and rigorously draws out the consequences of each of them getting into power.

The book is subtitled 'Life in Australia 2050'.

Dr Cocks emphasizes that he does not favour any one particular option of the three that he presents, and he asks readers to "resist going partisan, as soon as they think they know which strategy best reflects their political allegiances."

According to Senator Minchin, Future Makers, Future Takers is likely to stimulate important discussion about Australia's future directions.

"While there has been lively community debate about a number of matters of political form, decisions which we take today will have a real and material effect on the way our children and grandchildren will live their lives," says Senator Minchin.

"Although Doug Cocks is careful to avoid taking sides in his three scenarios, he is urgently concerned about the need to avoid 'short-termism' when choosing paths to our nation's future," says Senator Minchin.

"The way we educate our children today will determine their capacity to find employment and fulfilment as adults. Big infrastructure projects like airports and the Very Fast Train will still be operating in fifty years, and will have profound effects on population densities," says Senator Minchin.

"We need to consider, today, the consequences of continuing our relatively rapid population growth. Do we want the mega-cities which could be the consequence of a large-scale immigration program?" asks Senator Minchin. "What will our grandchildren inherit of our natural environment? Are today's government decisions going to have the effect of ensuring sustainability and profitability in industries such as mining, forestry, and agriculture in fifty years time?"

According to Senator Minchin, Future Maker, Future Takers will become a valuable handbook for all Australians concerned with future policy directions, and should be closely studied by politicians, and their advisers, of all political persuasions.

Future Makers, Future Takers will be launched by Senator Minchin on Wednesday 31 March at 5.30, in the Mural Hall, Parliament House, Canberra.

It is published by the University of New South Wales Press, and costs $39.95.
Review copies are available from Maria Foster on (02) 9664 0909 or email [email protected]

More information from:
Dr Doug Cocks 02-6242 1741
David Salt 02-6242 1645
0419 283 154
Monica van Wensveen 02-6242 1651
0418 168 535

*Note that to attend the launch you will need a Parliamentary pass. This can be arranged by
calling Shona Miller before 1.30 pm on Wednesday 31 March

Shona Miller 02-6242 1681

Contacts
Mr Nick Goldie
Journalist
PO Box 225
Dickson ACT 2602
Phone: +61 2 6276 6478
Fax: +61 2 6276 6821
Mobile: 0417 299 586
Email: [email protected]

Ms Monica van Wensveen
Communicator
CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems
GPO Box 284
Canberra ACT 2601
Phone: +61 2 6242 1651
Fax: +61 2 6242 1555
Mobile: 0417 561 802
Email: [email protected]

Sheila Newman, population sociologist
home page

(The following comment has been adapted from an e-mail I received yesterday. - JS) I was listening to ABC radio yesterday and they announced on the Madonna King programme that Fluoride was being released into Brisbane water supply from 1st December and will complete the full implementation on 31st December. Having recently moved to Australia from the UK I am horrified to learn that we are about to be mass medicated with Sodium Fluoride. I have written to my local MP to find out more, but was hoping that I could join an action group to bring a stop to this senseless practice. I mentioned in my letter a recent study published in the British Medical Journal and the latest warning from the American Dental Association not to prepare infant food with fluoridated water. There are so many published scientific papers warning of the dangers and proven data that tooth decay rates are no different in countries that do not fluoridate water. Why are they choosing to ignore the health concerns of Australian people?

(This comment was posted to ABC Radio National's National Interest guest book in response to an interview with Dr David Burchill concerning NSW state politics.)

What a shallow analysis of NSW politics by Dr David Burchill that was!

I guess it should have been no great surprise to me to learn that he was a regular columnist for that shameless propaganda arm of the New World Order, namely Rupert Murdoch's Australian newspaper. (To get some idea of just how appallingly the Australian misreported the NSW electricity privatisation issue, read Media contempt for facts in NSW electricity privatisation debate of 18 Sep 08.)

Burchill blames the NSW Labor Party administration and the Union movement for the trouble that the NSW government got into when it attempted to privatise electricity.

What about the NSW public, who were never informed by Costa and Iemma of their plans to privatise electricity in the 2007 elections, and who explicitly rejected privatisation in the 1999 elections and who, throughout all the many months of the recent conflict over privatisation remained 79%-86% opposed to privatisation in the face of media misinformation and taxpayer-funded pro-privatisation propaganda?

What an appalling outrage against democracy that was!

Thank goodness that the NSW Labor Party administration and the NSW union movement, for all of their faults, together with the Greens, Independents, and NSW state Liberals and Nationals, stood up to Iemma, Costa and the NSW corporate sector.

I urge the ABC to make use of proper commentators and analysts and to reduce its reliance upon those on Rupert Murdoch's payroll - David Burchill, Greg Sheridan, Paul Kelly and Phillip Adams to name only a few.

Postscript: The second and third paragraphs of the above comment was read out on the feedback section The National Interest program of Friday 24 Oct 08 - 27 Oct 08.

Copyright notice: Reproduction of this material is encouraged as long as the source is acknowledged.

James, the following statement by Biodiversity First President Brishen Hoff should suffice except I will say this. Polls show that Harper has no chance of forming a majority government. Secondly, as I have shown in two articles, the opposition parties, are actually worse for the environment if you look at it objectively, despite their green rhethoric. Our group has NO interest in proportional representation, as it deals only with the distribution of power BETWEEN political parties. We are only concerned with radical reform that would re-direct power FROM politicians to the people in the form of popular initiatives (referenda) modelled by several US states. Polls consistently have shown that the public have little use for government forced population growth. Witness Katherine Betts' latest study and US, British and Canadian poll results on immigraton. An official attitude of neutrality in this election is a victory for the Liberals, NDP and Greens. They really deserve a vote for Harper, if truth be told. But he doesn't deserve our support either, obviously. Here's what Brishen had to say: http://ecologicalcrash.blogspot.com/2008/10/why-i-wont-be-voting-tomorro... October 13, 2008 Why I won't be voting in tomorrow's federal election I am not apathetic. I care about the issues. Some issues are more important to me than others. The economy is far less important to me than the environment. Any economic problem is fixable unless environmental limits are the reason for the problem. More money can always be printed and/or moved around with taxes and subsidies. Environmental problems are much more serious. Species extinctions, pollution, alien species invasions, loss of farmland, and deforestation can't be fixed within a lifetime if ever. My criterion is the environment. I want to vote for whatever party will prove that they will not let biodiversity or natural resources per capita decline any further. But all of the parties have the same position on the environment. In Canada, all parties are committed to growthism -- endless human population growth in a finite world. All parties wish to reward and encourage the overpopulated nations by letting them export their people here and giving them foreign aid so that they will breed more. As people move from countries of high concentration to countries of lower concentration such as Canada, global overpopulation is maximized. As people move to countries like Canada where consumption per capita is high due to our cold climate, they almost always multiply their ecological footprint. There are only four parties in my riding: Liberal, Conservative, Green and NDP. None of them have a population policy based on what they believe to be an optimum population for Canada. They all share the same religious belief. They all believe that 33 million people isn't enough for Canada and are determined to destroy more of Canada's wilderness ecosystems, biodiversity, and farmland with the additional of more consumers. They say we need more people because Canadians lac k the skill to fill abundant jobs that are going begging. They say that we need more people because Canada's population is aging and that old people are more expensive than young people. They say that we need a younger work force to pay for the pensions of the old. They say that Canada needs multiculturalism. But their prescription is not a solution if it requires population growth. Population growth is unsustainable. Immigrants get old too. Who will pay for their pensions? Cultures assimilate. How long can we keep injecting more people for multiculturalism? If good jobs are so abundant, why are so many Canadians unemployed, underpaid or overworked? Is flooding the workforce with cheap labour right for Canadians or just corporations? Isn't there an ecological limit to growth? Why haven't politicians told us where they are taking this country? Are they taking us to 40 million? 100 million? 1 billion? Where will we import our resources from once we lack sufficient farm land to feed ourselves? How will we heat our homes when our oil, natural gas, and forests are gone? Surely, even in the mind of a politician, there comes a point where further population growth is no longer in our best interest. Why don't they tell us what this point is or what metric they would use to determine it? How many more species extinctions are considered perfectly acceptable to them? All of the political parties believe that the biodiversity loss we have suffered is perfectly acceptable because they all would like to order more of the same -- population growth. Human population and biodiversity are negatively correlated. That is scientific fact. For me to vote for a party, they must at very minimum promise population stabilization if not population reduction. However, the Greens, NDP, Conservatives and Liberals all promise the doom and gloom of more population growth. Either we stop population growth voluntarily while we st ill have some quality of life left, or nature will stop it for us in cruel ways such as starvation and wars over scarce resources. I am on strike. I won't be voting until either: A) there exists a party who plans to voluntarily stop population growth B) a "direct democracy" allows me to vote on the issues directly instead of flaky political personalities like Harper, Dion, May and Layton

Whether technological advances increase our environmental footprint depends on the nature of the technology. I agree that in general, technology has tended to increase humanity's impact over the last 100 years. However, while I=PAT is perfectly valid, advances in technology do not always result in a higher environmental impact. The examples of integrated pest management vs widespread use of extremely toxic sprays and photovoltaics vs coal fired power stations demonstrate the point. So T can either increase or decrease I, depending on how environmentally appropriate the technology is. From a mathematical point of view, then, advances in T can result in a multiplier of either; . more than one (net harm to the environment), . one (no change in environmental impact over the previous technology) or, . a fraction of one (reduced environmental impact over previous technology) This puts technology (T) in a separate category to either population (P) or affluence (A). 'Advances' in population (ie growth) can only increase our impact, if the other factors remain the same. Likewise, increases in consumption levels - or affluence - must result in greater environmental impact if the other factors remain the same. In a 6 page spread dedicated to the environmental impact of population growth, I think Suzuki could have spared a paragraph to explore this in more detail.