Spanish housing market collapses
The headline in the Corriere della Sera, Friday 30 May 2008, was "A million empty houses; an unusual Spanish crisis".
Cement chokes Spain's economy. The Spanish growth rate at 2.2% was one of the "most envied" in Europe, where the Eurozone median was "only 1.7%".
Due, however, to land speculation, Spain has overshot demand. According to a study by the University of Barcelona, housing prices in major cities of Spain have collapsed to 20% less than in 2006. Spain is for the first time in the grip of the unusual problem of having more houses than it needs.
Source:Maria Luisa Cohen in Europe.
Two days ago we wrote about the collapse of the French housing market. Everyone knows about the US housing market collapse. How soon before the Australian one hits bottom?
The fact is that construction is very heavily dependent on oil and banks are very dependent on construction.
With peak oil prices this cannot go on.
History of Spanish Housing 'Market'.
(Source: Sheila Newman, "Land and housing prices, land-use planning and housing systems in Australia and elsewhere (pdf file); the impact of globalisation, the internet, trends in natural increase, households and immigration: Submission to the Productivity Inquiry on First Home Ownership", page 36.)
Even during the civil war Franco was concerned about social housing. In 1957 the position of Minister for housing was created and publicly funded housing went from 100,000 dwellings in 1957 to 397,000 in 1973. By 1970 64% of the Spanish were homeowners. The 1973 oil shock saw massive cutbacks in public and private sector construction but rationalisation of the industry and renovation of older stock has given Spain the highest rate of homeownership in Europe.
About 70% of the Spanish are homeowners. There are few real-estate agencies in Spain because notaries and solicitors handle most sales.
Debt and price hikes up to 85% in 8 years had not yet resulted in a slowing market activity in 2003. Demographic changes, structurally low real-estate taxes and the large proportion of homeowners had all contributed to the high prices. Similarly to Thatcher's Britain, public housing was sold off to individual purchasers, many of whom then resold, causing a speculative boom which coincided with the wider global housing bubble.
See also: French housing market collapses of 29 May 08, Sydney's housing crisis - a different view of 27 May 08, No right to housing in the USA - Americans start to revolt of 26 May 08, Homeless may now sue state in France & Europe: Test Case of 26 May 08, European Union condemns Spain over 'disastrous' over-building of 21 June 07, In Spain, Water Is a New Battleground in the New York Times of 3 Jun 08
Common sense on immigration from Dr Bob Birrell
Belconnen Kangaroo massacre
(Original much larger photo by Ray Drew)
These healthy kangaroos, relaxed, uncrowded, in lush surroundings are all dead - order of ACT Australian government.
Housing estates due to go up around the area. (Does anyone know which developers?) The human species here is simply blind, absurd, and ridiculous to pretend that kangaroos are overpopulating when they are trapped and surrounded by expanding human populations, brought in to fill housing estates. Developers and government should be put on trial for causing enormous and needless suffering. They make Australians ashamed.
[Photograph by Marcus Fillinger, marcus[at]emulsion[dot]com[au].]
Some animals saved, after being ear-tagged, for fertility experiments and sterilisation.This animal is ‘darted’ with anaesthetic, then collared, and blindfolded to minimise stimulation, prior to contraceptive implant or sterilisation. Wildlife experts say it was all unnecessary.
Read on:
Much of the detail in the next nine paragraphs below comes from www.kangaroolives.com
In May 2007 the media exposed a covert plan by the Department of Defence and the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) Government to shoot to kill up to 3,200 Kangaroos at two Defence sites in the ACT.
The reasons given at the time: to ‘save’ the kangaroos from starving and to prevent them from competing with certain endangered grassland species reported to be on these sites: the golden sun moth, a legless lizard, and the earless dragon.
Around 500 of these kangaroos are trapped by a 2.5 metre high fence on a 116 hectare parcel of land at the former Belconnen Naval Transmission Station (BNTS). Of these, the plan was for 400 to be killed and have the remaining kangaroos forcefully sterilised. Somewhat extreme and barbaric measures to protect a moth, and unlikely to be the real reason why the ACT Government is so keen to clear this site, as the area around it is earmarked for housing development.
Following an immediate public outcry and subsequent consultations between Defence and a range of interest groups, Defence agreed to consult more widely. Members of Wildcare, a local volunteer wildlife rescue organisation with over 15 years of hands-on experience rescuing and rehabilitating kangaroos, submitted a proposal to Defence recommending a whole-of-ecosystem approach to the kangaroo issue. This preliminary proposal also detailed a workable strategy for the translocation of kangaroos.
Finally in September 2007, after consultations with Wildcare and a panel of experts, Defence announced that it would implement a kangaroo management plan in the ACT designed to promote sound ecological management and a responsible approach to animal welfare. The plan was to use a mix of translocation, fertility control and – “only where necessary" – euthanasia to bring the kangaroo population into balance with the ecosystem at the BNTS site. The contract to the successful to implement this strategy was awarded in early 2008.
Suddenly on 29 February, the ACT Government announced that it would block any application for a permit to allow the ‘export’ of kangaroos from the BNTS site. Not coincidentally, the ACT’s official kangaroo ‘culling season’ (killing season) recommenced the very next day.
Defence went back on their word, and the slaughter of these kangaroos on the site began on 19 May 2008. It was to continue over the next few days, with a target of over 400 animals.
These kangaroos were healthy and there was currently ample grass on the site following good rains over summer, and higher than average rain predicted over the coming months. There was no need for this slaughter to proceed.
Viable alternatives were available, including translocation, but Defence has ruled this out as being too expensive. A number of suitable properties in NSW were proposed. The ACT Government chose instead to order the killing of the kangaroos. Kangaroos are Australia’s most important native species.
Photos of the cull can be viewed at www.kangaroolives.comand a video news report can be viewed here.
Although many animals have been killed, there is still a petition to sign. There are many signatures but more may help, even after the fact.
According to the writer at www.canberraroos.com/p8.html, there was a promise "that there would be an official count of kangaroo numbers at the BNTS site before any animal was harmed," but that this did not happen.
Some unofficial observers think that the full ‘quota’ may not have been met and wonder if the total number or roos in the Belconnen area had been exaggerated, since there don’t seem to be many left. IF the numbers were exaggerated then this would COMPLETELY undermine the rationale for killing them. It would show severely inaccurate counting, destroy the argument of overcrowding based on estimated numbers, and bolster the argument that these animals could not be overcrowded since they were in beautiful condition and appeared relaxed and comfortable.
www.canberraroos.com write: “Forget the attempts by Jon Stanhope, Maxine Cooper and their heavily funded experts to convince you this is the only humane option. Forget the words they use like ‘culling’ and ‘euthanasia’, these are only an attempt to trick the public into thinking that this whole operation is ‘humane’. These kangaroos will be herded into a pen and slaughtered, then tossed into a pit and buried.”
Background information and more about the kangaroos
“Australia: a culture of violence toward its native animals.” (written by Ray Drew and published with photographs.) “The government has claimed that moving the animals is too expensive. It has also claimed (reasons vary from month to month) they overcrowd the site, that they are endangering vulnerable species, or they are starving and they must be killed for ‘humane’ reasons! The protesters say all these accusations are false, and the real reason is that the animals must be got rid of to make way for urban development. It is a fact that the local government intends to build housing on the grasslands outside the base fence, and probably inside as well when they take possession of the base within 18 months. No mention has been made of danger to rare species in the grasslands that extend outside the base fence. Do vulnerable species cease to exist a metre from the boundary wire? Astoundingly, the government allows cattle to graze there. The truth is that the ACT government has a policy of never translocating kangaroos ― killing is its traditional solution to animals that get in the way of development or sheep or cattle farmers. Within Australia, kangaroo lives are almost valueless, other than as a source of meat or hide. Comparatively few Australians admire their beauty and sensitivity - those that do love them do so with great passion. Otherwise, the gentle animals appear to arouse an unreasoning hatred among sectors of the population. Whenever the government announces a ‘cull’ (kill) thousands do NOT flock to protest the slaughter. In contrast, visitors to the country adore them and cannot understand the mass slaughter, which amounts to 3.6 million or more a year. That amounts to 10,000 killed every night.”
If you are disgusted by the way these animals are being treated, please contact those below to make your feelings known. Australia is not a real democracy, but we might get it back if we all react strongly enough and keep exposing this kind of behaviour.
See also: Australian Political Hypocrites Order "Final Solution" on Kangaroos on 20 May 08 by Captain Paul Watson of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, Kangaroo cull: necessary evil and the greater good of 27 May 08 by Adam Henry on Online Opinion with comments.
The Hon Kevin Rudd
Tel: 6277 7700
Fax: 6273 4100
Queensland numbers (His office is at Morningside):
Tel: 07 3899 4031
Fax: 07 3899 5755
The Hon Joel Fitzgibbon
Tel: 02 6277 7800
Fax: 6273 4118
The Hon Peter Garrett
Tel: 02 6277 7640
Fax: 02 6273 6101
The Hon Julia Gillard – as Minister for Education – what message are we giving our children about values and ethics?
Tel: 02 6277 7320
Fax: 02 6273 4115
The Hon Dr Michael Kelly AM - Parliamentary Secretary for Defence Support
Tel: 02 6277 4840
Fax: 02 6277 8556
Jon Stanhope Chief Minister ACT
Tel: 02 6205 0104
Fax: 02 6205 0433
RSPCA ACT
Cruelty complaints: 1(300)477722
Injured wildlife 02 6287 8113
Fax: 02 6288 3184
Sources: The material above was based on information exchanged between activists, but most was adapted or taken directly from:
Brett Clifton’s petition preamble at www.canberraroos.com
and Ray Drew’s work at www.kangaroolives.com
The photographs were by Ray Drew. The video was from www.canberraroos.com.
French housing market collapses
This doesn't mean the same thing in France as it would in the US or Australia. France has no major dependency on the housing market. It is not an economy geared to growth in population and rapid turnover. Land speculation is severely taxed and so are inheritances outside direct family. In Paris there are unclaimed buildings because those who would inherit them do not want to pay accumulated taxes. This is a far better system than the one that the Anglophone countries share versions of.
Nonetheless, the news is that sales are down by 27.9% this year and that lots of new investors are unable to find renters. Prices are predicted to decline another 4% this year and then another 6% next year.
The first time there was a housing bubble in France was between about 1989 and 1999. Something like 12,000 realtors went out of business when it crashed.
Graph: "Index of price of dwelling in ratio to disposable Income, using 1965 francs."
Source: L'Observateur de l'Immobilier, No. 43, paris, 1999. The original data source is "Marché immobilier des notaires" (Notaries' property market) and INSEE Annuaire statistique de la France, ed. 2001
This graph was photocopied in black and white so the colour distinctions have disappeared. The top line, indicating higher prices, is always for Paris. The second line is for other French urban centres, and the lowest line, "Province" is for Other Areas, including non-urban.
The graph shows the ratio of disposable income to domestic property prices per square meter from 1979 to the year 2000. Affordability was highest in 1981. Between 1987 and 1996, however, France, mainly Paris, was affected by the same period of global property speculation that affected Australia.
In 2001 I wrote the following in Chapter 8 of my thesis (The Growth Lobby and its Absence) under the heading, "Dwelling Prices and Affordability in France":
"This was the first time France had undergone such a phenomenon [as a housing bubble]. In contrast to Australia, however, the prices returned to the level preceding the speculation bubble. We can observe here that dwelling prices in France, according to this measure of affordability, have risen and fallen quite steeply, but there appears to have been an overall stability, since 1965, when they stopped rising in real terms."
I am not surprised to see that, even though a second bubble followed quickly on the first, prices have come right down again.
Because professional property development speculators do not have much control over the French market, it is actually possible for ordinary citizens to simply hold off buying until prices fall. In contrast, in the US, Canada, Australia, England, where property moguls and their upstream and downstream dependents lobby successfully for high immigration, it doesn't matter if locals stop buying, because the governments will bring in more people. This is totally inimical for civil order and our governments should be covered in shame and thrown out for promoting this horror. Unfortunately, as we often mention on candobetter.org the media control information in the anglophone countries and they also control the global real-estate market to a large extent and they control perception of government and, I fear, government perception. So it is really hard for the public (a) to realise what is happening (b) to organise against it.
In France, although it is possible for foreigners to purchase property, they only obtain work permits if they are Europeans, except in very rare circumstances. So there is not much point in zillions of people jumping in planes and coming over to buy cheap houses and live in France. They would not survive.
Of EU countries, the United Kingdom has terribly costly housing and the English do tend to come and buy cheaper land and housing in France and other EU countries, driving the prices up there. So do some other countries with higher housing prices, such as the Dutch. However these migrants cannot have nearly the same impact as they have, for instance, in Australia. Foreign property buyers find that they also cannot leave their properties to anyone except their children unless they are prepared to be very heavily taxed, so spouses cannot gold-dig so successfully. And, after your first house, you have to wait years to purchase another if you want to avoid the speculative taxes.
Sheila Newman
French Farmer Youth fight petroleum hikes: riot police
"Jeunes agriculteurs" (Young Farmers) are demanding tax free petrol for agriculture and for the government to control distribution of petroleum in France.
Other Jeunes agriculteurs blockaded the petroleum depot in Frontignan, France, where about 100 farmers engaged with 50 riot police (la Compagnie républicaine de sécurité, CRS). One member of the CRS and one young farmer were injured. The blockaders had barricaded the road leading to the depot with burning tyres, palates and plastic rubbish. The farmers came from all over the Languedoc-Roussillon region and were responding to calls from the Regional Centre of Young Farmers (Centre regional des jeunes agriculteurs - CRJA)
"Fishermen, farmers, it's the same battle", said Xavier Fabre, Vice-President of the Launguedoc-Roussillon region of the CRJA. "We also use gasoline. One year ago we were paying 40 to 50 centimes a litre and today we pay one euro the litre. [That's about $2.00 Australian or US] It is costing us 50 euros a day to run a tractor.
(Fishermen protesting oil prices continue to be active in France. On Wednesday they were giving out pamphlets in Sète, France, to educate people about their problems. And fishermen from Grau-du-Roi in Gard caused traffic jams for 11 km on the A9 freeway near Monpellier.)
In Toulouse a large group of Young Farmers successfully blocked deliveries to and from the local petroleum depot. They have said that they will continue their blockade until tomorrow and that if the government fails to accede to their demands, they will go further in their actions.
The rise in petroleum prices, for farmers, also entails the costs of fertiliser, which is made mostly from petroleum gas.
In France, to fertilise 100,000 ha the costs have risen by 15,000 euros (approx 30,000AUD/USD).
In Britanny on the road to Bordeaux, there was an operation escargot - (operation snail), i.e. a slow drive to make the point about hardship and petroleum prices, with truckies joining farmers in a convoy of slowly driving vehicles, blowing their horns.
In Bulgaria there were similar protests. In Taiwan queues formed on the roads to gas stations after the government announced that the prices were going up. Thousands of drivers queued up all night to fill their tanks.
Without the cheap fertiliser that comes from plentiful petroleum, most of the enormous gains in production made in the last 50 years, which have permitted human economies to support enormous populations, will disappear. We can see signs of this whole economic structure fraying in the food riots in poor countries, the profiteering over state-subsidised 'biofuel' production in the US (fatal for soils, which are everyone's greatest wealth), the organised protests in France, and, most arcanely, the ridiculous and pathetic arguments over minor tax relief at the bowser in Australia. Question to all: Does Australia have even stupider politicians than the USA?
Sheila Newman
Sources: France2 Infos, 20hs, 28-5-08 and Romandie News, "Dépôt pétrolier de Frontignan: les CRS délogent agriculteurs et pêcheurs"
Sydney's housing crisis - a different view
Orwellian Waterworks: big-agribusiness and Victorian Gov
It looks like a corporate-agribusiness group called the "Foodbowl Group" have tapped a short-circuit in local, regional and state democracy in an attempt to take over land and water in the Murray Darling Basin. (See #FoodbowlGroup">end this article for who the Foodbowl Group are).
Plans are for a $600 million pipeline to be paid for by Melbourne Water users who've been told to expect their bills to double over the next five years. They'll also pay nearly a third of the billion dollars allocated to carry 75 billion litres of water a year from the Goulburn Murray River system over the Great Dividing Range to Melbourne.
What is going on?
The Foodbowl group describes its aims as "To support the transition of small farming enterprises to world-competitive, sustainable agribusiness enterprises with a variety of models that maintain and enhance community cohesion." (More 'aims' lower down in article).
But were they invited? Were they asked?
Apparently not.
The impacted community, seems to be appalled and powerless. In the cities, in the rest of Australia, we all need to be paying attention to this. The Murray Darling Basin is Australia's only major inland food production area, and our richest. Despite horrendous farming practices, beginning with returned soldiers' plots, it still produces. Taking over this area with faceless big-business is not the answer to our environmental problems because big agribusiness answers to no-one and beats the life out of land and water before moving on. It is solely profit motivated, seeking to compete on the world market in a zero-sum game that takes no prisoners. The people who work in corporations may have good motives, but they are part of a machine which prioritises profit over anything else in a world where competition has taken over commonsense and sensitivity.
With fuel, food and water prices, cost of land and housing going up, Australians cannot rely on government to protect them. We have to avoid being split up and disempowered by so-called planning initiatives and top-down redesign of the way we live and produce food. When the chips are down it is only by ensuring that we have local production that we can negotiate for food and water, work and housing.
In the end, no government should tell people that they may not farm simply because they do not compete on the world market. Only two generations ago it was quite reasonable to aim for self-sufficiency, and not too much more was required to make a small income. These days, unless we ruin the land to make a dollar, we are priced off the land by taxes and regulations.
The world market is antithetical to sustainable agriculture - notably permaculture. Permaculture is the only sustainable way for Australian agriculture to survive. I don't pretend that you can have mixed farming everywhere; desert and rangeland comprise 75% of Australia. You cannot grow crops on rangeland; you can only run livestock, or live by hunting and gathering. The Victorian Government, like the other state governments and the Federal Government, have unreasonable commercial expectations, display little empathy for citizens, contempt for democracy, and a kind of worship for big business and development, called fascism elsewhere.
Barry Jones in his Sleepers Wake said it would come to this: governments overwhelmed by technology, taking advice from big business.
At the end of this article the investors in the Foodbowl group are listed. Here are the Foodbowl Group's objectives, as mentioned on their website
#Objectives" id="Objectives">[Foodbowl Unlimited] Regional Development Objectives
"While funding for Stage 1 of the Irrigation Modernization Project has been provided under the State Water Plan, the Foodbowl Group believes a range of regional development initiatives must be taken in parallel with the project.
Strategies need to be developed on a whole of region basis to:
• Ensure local government and planning authorities are working together to co-ordinate land-use and planning policies to encourage development of the most suitable land for appropriate agriculture;
• Develop a continuing and informed dialogue with the agribusiness community regarding likely demand for crops and foodstuffs in the context of changing world demographics and climate change;
• To work with state and federal governments to attract large water-use industry to the region;
• To work with educational institutions to develop expertise in irrigation and water-use research and support appropriate skills development to meet the region’s emerging needs;
• To promote and encourage appropriate non-water infrastructure to support the region’s development as an increasingly important centre for food and processed food exporting;
• To support the transition of small farming enterprises to world-competitive, sustainable agribusiness enterprises with a variety of models that maintain and enhance community cohesion."
#FoodbowlGroup" id="FoodbowlGroup">Who are the Foodbowl Group?
The Victorian Government is sponsoring this project in company with:
- Telstra
- Tyco Water Pty Ltd, Tyco Water Pty Ltd
37 Silica St, Carole Park 4300, Queensland, Australia.
Main business activities: Steel water pipes & fittings, steel pilings for wharfs & offshore structures.
Do they have anything to do with Mr Pratt and his Visy pvc piping projects in which the Victorian and Federal government became so involved? We don't know. Do you?
- GHD is an international engineering company: www.ghd.com.au/aptrixpublishing.nsf/Content/Directors_about
www.ghd.com.au/aptrixpublishing.nsf/Content/Offices_about
- Rubicon Systems Australia is a telecommunications, information technology and water technology company. Their Chairman, Stan Wallis, has long associations with multinational corporation management, and was formerly Chair of Amcor, AMP and Coles Myer, and author of the Wallis Report (Federal Government commissioned 1997). He is the President of the Business Council of Australia, which has been a major driver for the undemocratic push for a huge population in Australia. It is this push for population growth which has made recent droughts so much more severe and caused such great hardship. The Victorian Government, beginning with Jeff Kennett, spear-headed population growthism, at the behest of the Housing Industry and its upstream and downstream beneficiaries - mining, big-engineering, big-finance, newspaper-realty, and chipboard manufacture, among others.
See also, Who's who in AMCOR"
- The Hugh Williamson Foundation.
Under 'Governance', the Foundation lists Members of its 'Council' in 2007 as:
Richard Bluck AM, RFD, Executive Director, Leadership Victoria
John Allen, Principal, John Allen & Associates
Rhonda Barro (WCLP '99), Executive Director, Barro Group
Stella Clark, Stella Clark (WCLP '97), CEO, Bio 21 Aust. Ltd.
Geoff Cosgriff (WCLP '90), Executive Director, LogicaCMG P/L
Graham Evans AO, Consultant & former senior executive, BHP Billiton
Suzanne Jessup (WCLP '00). General Manager, Mahlab Recruitment
Charles Macek, Chairman, Sustainable Investment Research Institute
Andrea Polmear, Managing Director, Launching Pad
Garry Ringwood, Exec. Director, Executive Interim Management
Jane Tongs (WCLP '93), Chairman, Australian Alpine Enterprises
Jill Hollingworth (WCLP '97), Director, Tango Public Relations
What you can do: visit plugthepipe.com and join their mailing list.
#CWA" id="CWA">Country Womens Association (CWA) Reject the North South Pipeline
2 June 2008
The CWA passed unanimously a motion at their annual conference over the weekend requesting that the Brumby government to stop the pipeline. Over 1000 women present.
Wording was as follows:
"that the CWA urge the Victorian Government not to proceed with the North-South pipeline which transfers water to Melbourne."
Contact: Doreen Napier, Agriculture and Environment Convenor, CWA - Phone 03 58522597
Pet goat unites democratic protest in Frankston, Australia
Free Victor!
Wednesday, May 21st, 2008
Despite popular opinion, local councils don’t simply exist to enforce petty, confusing bylaws and issue parking fines. They perform several valuable functions - provision of many local services, town planning, management of local parks and facilities.
It made us wonder why so many good citizens have such a low opinion of them. Well, being good citizens ourselves, we set out on a crusade to find out. Then, yesterday, we stumbled upon Victor…
Victor is the loyal and loving pet of Ian Cook. Until recently, Victor lived with Mr Cook at their home in Frankston. Then the Frankston council took Victor away. But why?
See movie of Victor in his temporary home.
Well… you see… Victor is a goat. Apparently, as of recently, being a goat is against the law in Frankston. Or is that keeping a goat? We can’t be sure, but perhaps Deborah Morris of Leader News can better inform us. Click here to read her article, and be sure to return to this site to add your comments. Edit - also click here to see Deborah Morris’ follow-up story.
We’re interested in your thoughts on this story. Is it fair, or is it an example of petty local government bureaucracy? We clearly think it’s the latter, but would like you to share your thoughts. Should we start a petition on this site - a grass roots movement, if you will?
Jarrod
What you can do: visit freevictor.com and sign the petition.
No right to housing in the USA - Americans start to revolt
(Illustration a fragment from Wreck of the Hope by Caspar Friedrich)
This article is based on a Report from France2 News 25-5-08, translated to give Anglophones a different perspective on the anglophone land and housing system.
"In the United States the housing loan situation is producing more and more homelessness, but now an increasing number of bank victims are trashing their houses to make them uninhabitable before they leave them."
(Ask yourself, how long before the Australian situation gets this bad and are we going to put up with the government letting the banks do it to us?)
With amazement in his voice, the French newsreader announces the gruesome details of homelessness in the United States: "During the US election campaign the number of evictions continues to rise, even to double, as the credit crisis affects more and more people. In the American way, unfeelingly, the bailiffs arrive, put the furniture on the footpath, and the only thing left for the evicted families is their eyes to weep with."
A woman interviewee says, "When I telephoned the credit society, they said, "Well, if you can no longer pay, just leave the keys for us and go outside."
But finally people are beginning to revolt against these insane impositions by their mere fellows in a financial system which is no longer serving the community!
Although so many more people are returning their keys, they are first "meticulously vandalising" the houses they are forced to leave. "Systematic destruction of walls, toilets, electrical wiring, decorations - they destroy everything, with rage in their hearts to avenge themselves."
A bailiff describes his experience: "We have found toilets destroyed by sledge-hammers. People have disemboweled pipes to make them leak; they have cut the wires to the air-conditioners and pulled wiring out of the light fittings."
And it's working: these vandalised properties become unsaleable, even at half-price. Of course this means that cancelling mortgages is costing the banks a lot of money. So now they have begun to pay people bonds if they leave their houses in good condition.
Commentary from newsreader: "Yet the simple solution of renegotiating credit simply doesn't seem to occur to anyone!"
Report based on "Etats-Unis : la crise des subprimes poussent les Américains à quitter leur maison et parfois à la saccager" 20h15m32s, from France2 News 25-5-08, 20h15m32s
Homeless may now sue state in France & Europe: Test Case
Test case in France finds new EU laws permit homeless citizens to sue state for failure to provide housing. (Report on France2 Television News, 22-5-08)
The administrative tribunal of Paris has found in favour of a family in sub-standard housing, whose application to the regional authorities (la prefecture) for better housing had been rejected.
Minister for Housing, Christine Boutin, commented that this legal decision demonstrated that the relevant new laws of 5 March 2007 were working.
"This is evidence that the law works, despite criticism that the right to sue for housing would turn out to be too complicated," she said on France2 television.
Calling the matter urgent, in an interim administrative tribunal the judge in chambers put aside an unfavourable decision made on 3 March by the Paris Mediation Commission, which had refused to consider a request for accommodation which had been made by a single woman who was raising two children alone.
This means that Namizata Fofana will be able to put her case again before the Mediation Commission.
If the Commission agrees that she has a case, the regional authorities (le prefet) will find her housing "within the next six months", Christine Boutin explained. And, if the applicant does not have accommodation by 1 December 2008, she will be able to sue the French state.
In all countries of the EU citizens are entitled to housing as a right, although this is a very new idea for Britain.
It is sad to realise how far from the provision of this most basic of rights have drifted Australia, Canada and the USA.
[English language acccount of case reported in France on 20/05/2008 - translation by Sheila Newman]
Victorian Biodiversity Green Paper signals Black Day for Biodiversity
Hans Brunner, internationally respected Victorian wildlife ecologist and forensic hair identification expert, author of Hair ID, says that information provided in the Victorian Government's Land and Biodiversity at a Time of Climate Change Green Paper highlights the rapid decline in the quality of our environment. The blame is mainly put on global warming and, thankfully, also on the government’s persistent push for economic and human population growth.
This “growth" will exacerbate the present decline not only in the environment but also in the future welfare of the people.
It is the government’s first duty to make sure that we can survive. This will obviously not happen if it does not change its policies. Those who make peaceful changes impossible, make violent changes inevitable!
Unfortunately, no politicians have the guts to treat the population and growth issue with the seriousness it deserves. This seems to be due to political cowardice and blind obsession.
Sadly, the green paper offers mainly band-aid solutions.
Whatever the conscientious little man achieves is more than undone by the present policies of the government. Hence, we keep on losing thousands of species of plants and animals resulting in local and national extinctions.
The
Because of the way our activities are endangering so much life on earth, we need to have a serious and honest look at ourselves and realise that, objectively speaking, we are in fact the greatest pest species on earth. In this light, it should not be difficult to see that all our environmental and social problems are directly and proportionally linked to the obsessionally driven population and economic growth rate.
Democratic views ignored
Community recommendations to submissions like this are mostly ignored, in violation of the democratic process.
Page 8 shows the bioregions of Victoria but does not show urban bioregions of urban cities and towns.
Pages 13 and 14 do not show when country towns ran out of water and when water restriction were implemented.
Page 17: Why is there no text for fig, 7, “Summary of threatened animals in Victoria, 2007?”
Page 40: 6.6, Building ecological connections is continuously ignored in outer urban areas where existing wildlife corridors are wantonly destroyed.
Page 46: The desperate water issue has not been sufficiently linked with population growth!
The blame has been manly put on global warming and an uncertain future. Why then gamble with increasing the human population?
Page 52: “ While some adopt modern approaches and consider principles of sustainability and biodiversity, others are outdated and do not consider recent knowledge and threats.” An example is the proposed Frankston Bypass where road easements were reserved in 1960, a totally outdated decision.
There is also a constant “nibbling” at the Green Wedges, resulting in environmental groups suffering burnouts through constantly fighting VCAT’S etc.
Page 89: Consultation paper submission raised concerns about the continuing population growth, increased resource use, urbanisation, pollution and the sea change/tree change phenomenon, which means I am not alone in highlighting the absurd and obsessed push for population and economic growth. The 2030 plan expects over one million more people in the Melbourne growth areas and another 50’000 on the Mornington Peninsula. On top of that we have an artificially created baby boom by giving $ 5’000.00 for every new borne baby, and added to this we allow 170,000 more migrants to come here each year.
My major concern is that the GREEN PAPER will give people false hope. We have to realise that it is us, and rapidly more of us, that are destroying this earth by pollution and over use of resources such as fuel and water as well as destroying the environment. And , importantly, we must not blame global warming and climate change for the rapid decline in biodiversity etc., since it is also all of us who have caused it and keep on increasing it.
Finally, we must still go on and do what we can to protect the species we still have but also strongly and openly protest against the “ poles apart “ policies of the government.
Hans Brunner, Wildlife Ecologist, Frankston, Melbourne
(Hans Brunner is an animal hair specialist who is famous for his forensic work in showing that hairs in the Azaria Chamberlain case were dog hairs (Dingos are dogs!), thereby overturning Lindy Chamberlain's conviction, and who made the world news in 2002 through his identification of hair from a previously undocumented primate in Indonesia, which locals thought could be the "Orang Pendek".
This article was based on his submission to the Victorian Government re the Green Paper.
ALP's remarkable pretence on population growth
The fraudulent case for immigration and population growth
This was posted to an online discussion concerning the dramatic increase in the rate of immigration to this country at larvatusprodeo.net.
Here are some articles which show how the increase in population of recent years has demonstrably degraded the quality of life of most Australians (and also residents of some overseas countries) in recent years:
Redland City to pay with increased water charges for population growth, Shared accommodation a necessity and no longer a choice for many in Brisbane, How to end the Queensland economy's addiction to population growth?, Working man's vegetable plot under attack again, Exhibition documents erosion of childhood by overdevelopment and overpopulation, Channel 7 markets unlivable Melbourne to a helpless audience, Courier-Mail beats up on public for complaining about cost of 'progress', Rent gouging threatens Brisbane inner city retail community, How illegal immigration into the US harms poor US Hispanic citizens and More chickens of population growth come home to roost in Queensland.
In regard to the supposed economic benefits of immigration, a House of Lords Committee recently demolished the economic case for immigration (see House of lords tells UK government to limit immigration and the original article in the UK's Telegraph newspaper). The British Optimum Population Trust, whilst welcoming the stance by the House of Lords committee, pointed out that the report understated the environmental damage caused by immigration-driven population growth (See House of Lords’ immigration report ‘forgets environment’).
In Australia in January 2006 the Productivity Commission found very little economic benefit from immigration. In fact, it actually showed that that GDP would rise slightly whilst average hours worked would rise proportionally even more. So, in most peoples' understanding, even defined in extremely narrow economic terms, we would be worse off rather than marginally better off as a result of immigration. And then, let's not forget that GDP is an utterly stupid way to measure our prosperity in the first place. As anyone, more economically literate than the Productivity Commission should know, and as John Coulter, National President of Sustainable Population Australiareminded us in a media release (pdf) of 19 January 2006:
“Both GNP and GDP count many costs as benefits adding them to the index rather than subtracting them. The report draws attention to the increased population adding to congestion and pollution but fails to recognise that the costs of ameliorating these adverse effects will appear in the national accounts as additions to, rather than subtractions from, GNP and GDP.”
Incidentally, this Productivity Commission Report is the straw that the Australian seized upon in order to dismiss objections to increased immigration in its editorial More workers are a positive force of 19 May.
Does anyone here still seriously maintain that having millions more people here to help us dig up and export more of our non-renewable mineral resources in order to help China further pollute its own environment and melt the polar ice caps, will help make this country a better place to live, even in the short term?
In 1942 with a population of only 7 million, Australia was one of the most technologically advanced nations on earth as Andrew Ross showed in Armed and Ready - The Industrial Development and Defence of Australia 1900-1945, 1995, Turton and Armstrong (see The myth of the Howard Government's defence competence). Increasing our population has directly correlated with this country losing its technological edge over other countries So, let's, for once and for all bury the lie that population growth is necessary for economic prosperity.
Because we have surpassed what is this country's optimum population size, increasing population actually results in dis-economies of scale rather than the economies of scale that pro-growth economists promised us. As the population density becomes greater it actually costs more per person to build all the necessary roads, footpaths, traffic lights, noise barriers, electricity substations, power lines, water pipes, hospitals, schools, etc., etc. That is one reason why our water rates, council rates and electricity charges are rising. Has anyone contemplated that this may be one reason why it is so difficult for governments to fund road building these days without resort to tolls?
What population growth does―and what common sense and intuition should have long ago warned us, in spite of the claptrap peddled by economists in the pay of land speculators and property developers―is decrease the amount of natural resources available to each of us. Consequently, the demands that each of us make on this largely arid and infertile land are increased. That is the principle driver of soil salinity, land erosion, and the threatened loss of the Murray Darling river system. To add to the these demands upon our continent by adding more human inhabitants, before the existing problems are solved, is environmental recklessness.
Topic:
Debate on funding retirement in France
Wednesday 21 May, News from France.
In France at the moment there are national strikes over government proposals to make people work for 41 years instead of 40 years in order to obtain full pensions. In 2015 there will be around 14m workers to 18m retirees, according to demographic trends.
For some time France has been preparing for this eventuality, whilst noting that there will be more employment for young people, currently suffering relatively high unemployment.
On the France2 television 8pm news two economists were interviewed for responses to the question of how to fund retirement.
Michel Godet, an economics lecturer at the National Conservatory of Arts and Trades, (CNAM) said, "People will have to work longer so that they can save for longer."
Liem Hoang-ngoc – University Paris 1 economist said, "Just by asking people to save for longer does not mean that they can save for longer, since employers are forcibly retiring people at younger and younger ages." He said that there were many other ways of tackling the situation. He proposed a stock options tax and a tax on corporate profits.
Michel Godet responded by saying, "Taxes on big business profits are anti-competitive… we live in an open market … taxing big business will make it go overseas."
Liem Hoang-ngoc didn't get a chance to respond.
My thought was that, if corporations went off-shore, France could then refuse to import goods from corporations that refused to pay tax. Another good reason for national economies - to have control over predacious big business.
Liem Hoang-ngoc's papers are on-line (in French) at http://matisse.univ-paris1.fr/ One is called, "Long live taxes!"
(Note that the French youth to age 'discrepancy' is quite a deal more severe than in Australia, but that, as with all thing, it will pass in its own time, like the proverbial goat through a boa-constrictor. It is the result of a baby-boom in the 1950s and 1960s. In 2050, the French population will begin to slim down to relatively equal age cohorts. )
Doug Cameron in the cross-hair of the Murdoch press
Labor Senator-elect Doug Cameron is the only Federal politician, so far, to have summoned up the courage to raise a critical voice against the Government's recently announced plans to raise the annual immigration level to 300,000. For this, he has earned the wrath of The Australian newspaper.
An editorial Closing the shop of 21 May 08 did not even attempt to dispute Cameron's warning that immigration will depress the wages of Australian workers, rather, it welcomed the prospect:
Mr Cameron's worries about migration most likely stem from fears that accepting unskilled workers from the Pacific islands and elsewhere will put downward pressure on wages for union members.
His comments reflect the fact that unskilled migration may be used to offset the inflationary impact of scrapping the Howard government's Work Choices legislation.
Those who have followed The Australian's pushing of the immigration barrow in recent days will know that, in the moral Universe inhabited by News Limited, the only right and proper end, towards which any responsible Labor government can work, is not towards controlling housing hyper-inflation, rising water and electricity charges, council rates and—all driven by population growth—but rather towards controlling 'wages inflation'. Because the Rudd government has been so enormously generous to unionists in having scrapped aspects of Howard's "Work Choices" legislation, they are now beholden to unquestioningly accept whatever other means the Rudd government decides to use in its place to erode their standard of living, including the raising of immigration levels.
The editorial raises the familiar spectres of xenophobia and the White Australia policy in order to place itself indisputably on the high moral ground:
… the immigration debate has already pricked the raw nerves of xenophobia and self interest that lie just below the surface of many within the labour movement. …
It is a rerun of the views that underpinned the ALP's support for the discredited White Australia policy, which grew out of a deal between labour and capital to protect Australian jobs from Chinese immigration.
Of course The Australian's editorial writers, who clamoured to have this country join the war to seize Iraq's oil assets, is, in contrast to ‘self interested’ Australian workers, fearful of their living standards being destroyed by the further crowding of this country, are acting only out of pure altruism and love for for their fellow human beings.
Mr Cameron's comments are held to be “proof that the extreme Left and extreme Right arms of politics join hands around the back.”
It is not known whether Doug Cameron, himself, would accept The Australian's labelling of him as ‘extreme Left’. In any case, this ignores the fact that most of the Australian far left are in agreement with The Australian's support for high immigration. For decades, anyone on the on the Australian far left who would have dared question immigration in the way that Doug Cameron is now doing would have found themselves very quickly ostracised. Members of the wider community opposed to population growth also encounter irrational opposition. #harrassment" id="harrassment">For instance, the Victorian branch of Sustainable Population Australia encountered a demonstration outside Prosper Australia and members were publicly defamed and threatened with violence by members of the Socialist Alliance and others in 2004 until they ceased to associate there.
It is to be hoped that Doug Cameron will stand up to the Murdoch newsmedia and resist the pressure to become corralled with all of his fellow Labor Parliamentarians into supporting Chris Evans' high immigration program.
See also Doug Cameron: guest workers threaten Australian wages and conditions of 20 May 08, Is it reactionary to oppose Immigration? of 16 Dec 07 (also on Web Diary)
Immigration lawyers exposed in mass immigration rort by brave union
“In order to influence Congress we need to show that there are a large number of American degreed and experienced tech workers who are suffering actual harm due to employment based visas and offshoring. Similarly, reporters need to be able to quickly locate American tech workers in their area in order to balance articles that stem from corporate press releases and funded "studies."” The Programmers Guild has already filed 300 discrimination complaints against H-1b employers. But in order to seek large damage claims, they need a group of plaintiffs that have suffered actual harm. If you select "Will be party to class action" in your profile, the Programmers Guild will notify you of job ads to apply for. If the Guild files a class action suit against that employer, you will be a harmed plaintiff eligible to share in the damages award.Click here to see the film. Democracy has been replaced by the globalised client state, which is no state at all. But the internet offers these kinds of possibilities for organizing. We need a similar organization in Australia. Unions in Australia are on the run and anyone who speaks up in them, like Doug Cameron, risks being targeted by the mainstream press. No wonder Australians hardly dare speak up for eachother if that is the treatment they are going to receive.
Good news! WTO negotiations may collapse as nations push for self-sufficiency.
Good news! WTO negotiations may collapse as nations push for self-sufficiency.
In a syndicated piece in The Australian Financial Review, “CAP on trade fuels food fears", London-based writer, Geoff Kitney, expresses British horror at the prospect of France leading the EU and European agriculture from July 1 this year. I guess he thinks that the national syndicators of mad cow disease could do a much better job.
He describes the French as “seizing on the global scare about dwindling food supplies” to call on the EU to use its ‘common agricultural policy’ (CAP) to motivate European farmers to raise production and make Europe self-sufficient in food.
I don’t know about you, but ‘global scare’ strikes me as a bit of a frivolous way to describe widespread starvation and food riots, whilst ensuring national self-sufficiency sounds to me like the right way to go.
Kitney sounds as if the prospect of declining oil reserves hasn't sunk in, or perhaps he just doesn’t understand the oil-food connection.
According to Kitney, naughty Germany has backed up the French position, saying food supplies are key, even if that means higher prices. And, not content to ensure adequate food supplies:
“Germany went further, suggesting that as food supplies became more scarce, it was important that the EU demanded higher environmental and health standards from countries such as India, china and the US if they wanted to sell in the European market.”
Shock! Horror! That could mean an end to cheap imports, mobile capital and slave labour. How will the rich survive if they can’t exploit poor and dirty conditions off-shore? How will they get to own all the seeds in the world if the EU rejects GM and the patenting of genes? Heavens, the next thing they will be banning child labour – and then the birth rate will fall in the third world. What’s an economic rationalist to do if nations begin thinking rationally for their citizens?
“Little wonder”, [writes Kitney], “that there is such a sense of urgency to get an agreement now before the rising tide of protectionist fear overwhelms the WTO negotiations.”
He goes on to say that the WTO cannot just at the moment “boost food production and lower food prices” but describes how it will be working on stopping all this democratic nonsense about self-sufficiency.
Whilst the [unfortunately well-fed] WTO negotiators will be “working overtime at its headquarters on the foreshores of Lake Geneva” the UN Human Rights Council will be holding a special session just down the road to look at the global food crisis “from a human rights perspective.”
What a novel approach!
Kitney relates that Olivier De schutter, the new UN rapporteur on the 'right to food' has expressed concern that protectionism in the 'rich' countries is making the products of the poor countries uncompetitive.
Unfortunately, it seems that the UN never really looks at the hard problem of land-stealing in the third world, which has meant that perfectly viable economies became basket cases in the 19th C and, just as they were getting some control over the situation, the economic hit-men of globalism went in under the shock-doctrine and turned them into slave-dictatorships, coordinating the international privatisation of public land and utilities and rewriting constitutions. (See Review of Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine)
We certainly cannot trust the WTO to look after democracy and the environment. The UN, whilst made up of many excellent local and regional organisations, seems to act on a global level as a monolith dancing to the tune of the WTO, the World Bank, and the USA. Whilst national systems may not be perfect, they are a step towards relocalisation. In an oil poor world we need to get control back over our immediate surroundings and governments.
Peak Oil hits French fishing industry - State subsidizes trawler-fuel
French State subsidizes French fishing fleet oil in harsh context of oil prices of $134US on 21-5-08
Industrialised fishing is not only no longer sustainable due to falling fish-stocks but now falling energy supply has priced it out of the free market.
This is a real loaves and fishes crisis. Where is a miracle when you need it?
The French and most Europeans realize that they must prepare their industries to sustain a self-sufficient Europe.
After days of strikes with roads to petrol stations barricaded so that bowsers could not be replenished, the minister in charge of the French fishing industry received permission from the EU to accede to some of their demands. 40 m euros will go to assist the industry to deal with higher petroleum prices. 22 m of that will go to cod fishermen who have been temporarily unable to work due to having exceeded their quotas.
The French Primeminister, Francois Fillon, said yesterday that marine fishing is the only profession in France where the cost of petrol is deducted from the crew’s wages. It is now costing more to fish than fishermen earn. Marine fishing is also the most dangerous profession in France, with the greatest numbers of accidents and fatalities. He stated that these factors meant that the industry is not comparable to the trucking industry, when asked if similar subsidies would be accorded to road transport.
French fishermen complain that the price of imported fish is too low to compete with. The French fishing catch has fallen by 60% whilst the French consume 40% more fish. One in nine fish consumed comes from aquaculture.
The French fishing fleet has been rationalized by law and through attrition from 43,000 to 17,000 over the past few years as the fish-stock falls and the EU tries to come to grips with ecological limits. There have been battles for fishing territory between French fishermen and other European fishermen, notably the Spanish, who, in 1994 boarded a French fishing boat, “La Gabrielle”, and surrounded it with 300 Spanish tuna-fishing vessels for seven days whilst negotiations proceeded at an international level to free the French boat.
The French fishing fleet is made up mostly of trawlers. Since the 1970s, line fishing was replaced by huge metal nets. Trawlers drag these heavy nets back and forth across the sea all day long. According to the Regional economic observatory in Britanny, petroleum made up 20% of costs for a trawler 16-20 meters long in 2006, compared with 10% for a lobster pot-boat of 12-20 meters and around 6% for a line-boat of 12-24 meters. ( Source :Laetitia Clavreul, « La crise du gazole révèle les failles de la pêche française, », Le Monde, Paris, )
The possibility, so cherished by growthism-economists, of increasing productivity to solve all resource problems, comes head on up against the reality of declining fish stocks and declining oil production in this case. Aquaculture is not a simple solution because it also relies heavily on fossil fuel to feed its fish, is highly polluting and disturbing to ecosystems, and cannot compete with the variety supplied by nature. There is currently research into using organic waste, including human waste, to feed aquacultures, but doing this safely on an industrial scale is problematic like so many processes which work on a small scale.
Iceland, the most peaceful country on earth
Being half-Icelandic in background I'd like to believe in intrinsic Norse wisdom but …
- The reason my great grandfather's trade (carpenter) was so revered was because Icelanders deforested their country (like the English).
- Icelanders are worse than Kiwis for being travellers. They are dumping more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere in their constant trips to hot climes.
- They still think its their cultural right to hunt endangered whales.
- I think they are building or have built with big corporate dough a smelter with terrible implications for the atmosphere.
They are a wealthy people, but they pay a big price for that. As Scandinavians, they simply out-work most of the human race. A CBC documentary compared the Newfoundland economy with that of Iceland and really couldn't come up with anything much more than the fact that Celts are lazy drunks and Icelanders are hard working drunks. Work hard, Play Hard. Their hygiene and housekeeping standards reflect that too.
Both Newfoundland and Iceland are big islands dependant on fishery except now the Newfies have oil money to help. But the difference is that the Icelanders know that if they don't work hard, they starve, with no one to bail them out.
Newfies have been able to rely on constant welfare inputs from Ottawa and took on an Aboriginal work ethic. Whole joke books have been published exploiting that character trait. Except it is PC to tell Newfie jokes (the jokes are published in Newfoundland) but First Nations jokes are off-side. With the Alberta oil economy to lure them out, this welfare culture, five decades old, is disappearing.
Now Newfoundland and Iceland are both beginning to resemble each other more, especially in their disregard of the environment.
Other interesting parallels, both cultures, Celtic and Norse, place a huge value on literary accomplishments, writers and poets are highly esteemed and political debate is a pastime. Both societies boast a tradition of feisty women, but Icelandic women are actually more independent because they broke free of the church. They go on strike once a year and shut the whole country down to prove their importance to the economy.
Because it has always been a socialized welfare state with free health, education, employment and child care benefits and total female employment participation, taxes are sky high and inflation as well. This latter fact is something you should reflect upon. Because double-digit inflation discourages savings so much—in fact it makes it nonsensical to put aside anything—people are encouraged to be hyper-consumers.
They run out and buy things and blow everything they have on cars, clothes and trips. Live for today has always been the motto. So being seen in fancy clothes in a smart car and in a well-furnished apartment becomes a cultural requirement. I would be looked upon as a hillbilly. Also the pressure to work long hours at two jobs—not an Icelandic phenomena exclusively obviously—just to get the money to pay the huge rent and grocery bills ($5 for a lettuce) creates the stress that makes young people and everyone turn to alcoholism big time.
Promiscuous sex is also a cultural trademark with all its emotional and physical costs. It is like when socialist Gunnar Myrdal was criticizing the Swedish welfare state. Whatever model of society we design, whatever set of problems we solve, a new set arises with the better model. There are always trade-offs. But somehow the grass is always greener in other countries.
BTW, my mother's cousin, Helgi Seljun was a Communist deputy (Peoples Party) deputy in the Icelandic parliament. There were 7 parties at the time and I think 5 of them were left of centre. Today there would be a very interesting coalition I'm sure. The president I believe is still a woman whom I saw in Vancouver about a decade ago I think.
One positive statement I would like to make about the land of my mother—and obviously don't circulate this—is that they have always pursued true National Socialist#main-fn1">1 objectives. They know they are keepers of a precious culture that is 1200 years old and have no right to let that be absorbed or diluted by the influx of other cultures.
As matter of fact, whenever a foreign word invades the language, a special government commission replaces that word with a Norse neologism. Anyone who becomes an Icelandic citizen through marriage must change his or her name to old Norse names. Thus the language spoken today would have been entirely intelligible to Eric the Red a millenia ago, and he could have read the Icelandic Bible that sits in my living room.
Icelandic libraries are full of Norse sagas, poems, ghost stories and debates. The food they eat is second to none. Fish and lamb and all the deserts my grandmother made for me, and coffee made like no one else did. Only you hold the sugar cubes in your tongue when you drink it. Point being, there is nothing “deficient” in Icelandic culture that needs “enrichment” from the immigration of other cultures that would threaten it and also rob the people of their irreplaceable low-density living.
Tim Murray, 27 Dec 2007
Quadra Island, British Columbia, Canada
See also The Australian's April fool's joke
Footnotes
#main-fn1" id="main-fn1">1.#main-fn1-txt">↑ This means ‘national socialist’ in the earlier sense, which pre-dated the appropriation of that term in the 1920's by Hitler's National Socialist (Nazi) Party.
Time to say hoor-roo to the Kangaroo Industries Association
The Weekly Times promoted the so-called ‘commercial culling’ of kangaroos in Victoria, where it is currently banned, in an opinion piece by John Kelly, Executive Officer of the Kangaroo Industries Association of Australia. (“It’s time to say hoor-roo,” May 14, 2008, p.17.)
John Kelly correctly writes that in Victoria there are no reliable estimates of the size of the kangaroo population.
“Virtually nothing goes into ensuring the animal is protected or managed in any way. The state has no clear idea how many kangaroos it supports, where they live, what’s happening to their populations in response to seasonal conditions or, most disturbingly, how healthy they are."
He is right. Unfortunately the Victorian Government either doesn’t care, or it may actually want to get rid of wildlife because preserving it means restraints on development and human population growth.
But, with a kind of shoot first and ask questions later logic, Kelly argues that, “Establishing a commercial harvest and the data collection mechanisms required to implement it instantly changes all this.” He means that the Kangaroo industry should be given a license to kill kangaroos in exchange for doing the government’s job of collecting statistics.
We do need good data collection mechanisms because the data available on the structure of kangaroo populations and the size and health of individuals gives reason for anxiety. To authorize commercial kills in return for data, however, is to put the cart before the horse and then shoot the horse as a good business deal and good for horses.
Kelly cites the RACV as having recently reported an increase in animal collisions in 2005 of 43 per cent over the previous two years.
Kelly then proceeds to create an impression that
(a) kangaroos are the cause of increasing road collisions; and that
(b) they therefore must be more numerous.
Shamelessly he concludes that “It is also reasonable to expect a well managed kangaroo harvest to reduce this [imagined kangaroo proliferation].”
Let us look at the first claim, that animal collisions are increasing. Kelly implies that collisions (with all kinds of animals) are increasing because the number of animals is increasing. According to the AWPC, however, this does not make sense:
“Likely reasons for more animal collisions are more toll-ways, roads and suburban expansion. More cars and human activities are coming into conflict with animals who were previously in safe habitats in Victoria."
“Humans are the only species in Australia that is rapidly increasing and our numbers and expansion coincide with a decrease in other species.”
Indeed, uprooted dying trees and devastated grasslands are a familiar sight in Australia, a country where extinctions are proceeding at a greater pace than almost any other country on earth (refs: 1301.0 - Year Book Australia, 1990 and 1301.0 - Year Book Australia, 2008
The overall trend is a decrease in other species and a higher death rate. Commercial kangaroo killing will only accelerate the death rate.
If a farmer built a housing estate in his front paddock and chased all his stock out onto the road, would he count the pile of corpses and conclude that there were more cows in his front paddock as a result? This is what the Kangaroo Industries Association of Victoria seems to be doing.
Maryland Wilson, President of the Australian Wildlife Protection Council (AWPC) agrees that more accurate counting, assessment, protection and better treatment is necessary, but cannot agree that there is any evidence that the numbers could warrant kangaroo killing commercialisation. The AWPC came to the opposite conclusion through scientifically based and accurate counting of kangaroos and other wildlife in local areas, starting with the Mornington Peninsula. The AWPC warns that the population structures and the trends in numbers long-term point to high extinction risks unless we protect the animals from road and suburb encroachment by providing connecting corridors and protecting and extending habitats.
But Kelly writes, “Put it altogether and a commercial kangaroo harvest would be worth well over $15 million a year to Victoria. It turns a shameful waste into a valuable resource and delivers better kangaroo damage mitigation to embattled farmers and better animal welfare outcomes than current practices.” In a final flourish, he adds, “It is [also] likely to improve public safety on roads, helps to protect plant bio-diversity from overgrazing, and creates jobs in the bush. Why not do it?"
But Maryland Wilson of the AWPC, said that Mr Kelly’s conclusions are simply astounding.
“Mr Kelly is completely out of date, even citing the industry’s own authorities. Gordon Grigg, the author of the industry ‘bible’, 'Commercial Harvesting of Kangaroos in Australia', upon whose research the industry developed, recently repudiated his original conclusions. He stated that, 'The damage done on grazing lands by kangaroos has been overestimated by up to 500%.' His conclusion was that, 'This would mean that kangaroos are a much smaller component of the total grazing pressure than is generally accepted'. And he concluded that, 'The hope of getting a significant improvement in wool production by pest-control of kangaroos is probably doomed to failure'".
(Grigg citation by Juliet Gellatley, UK zoologist, in, "Slaughter of the innocents", Viva Life, UK, Spring, 2002.)
Redland City to pay with increased water charges for population growth
In 2007 the Queensland Government forcibly acquired the water assets of South East Queensland local governments. Because local governments are not recognised under Australia's constitution they are totally subject to the whim of their respective state governments. That is why the Queensland government was also able to forcibly amalgamate many local governments in 2007 against their objections and the objections of their the constituents#main-fn1">1. Having lost control of their water assets, the residents in these areas have now found that they now face hikes in their water bills.
As Redland City Mayor Melva Hobbs explained in a media release of 14 May#main-fn2">2 Redland Shire will now have to buy bulk water from the Queensland Government at prices significantly higher than what it now costs council to produce it. Redland Council plans to meet with the state Government in order to have the bulk water pricing regime reviewed. Bob Abbot the Mayor of the Sunshine Coast, another affected council has noted that his constituents will be effectively paying more rates so that water can be taken out of their regions to meet the water needs of other regions, principally Brisbane, which do not have enough water to cater for their own needs#main-fn3">3.
The principle reason for the price rises is the cost of construction of a water grid to cater for the increased population largely caused by the Queensland Government. Today's newspapers are full of stories about further blowouts#main-fn4">4 of the grid. These blowouts are due to factors, such as rising costs of petroleum and other materials, the economic crisis and the higher cost of credit, all of which should have been anticipated. It would seem that Queensland Premier Anna Bligh's past self-congratulation at the Queensland government's claimed progress in the construction of its water grid was premature#main-fn5">5.
Whilst the Queensland state government and the Federal Government continue to recklessly encourage the population growth that is driving up water costs, Redland City, for its part is prudently attempting to slow it down.
The new Redland City Council was elected on 15 March on a platform of opposition to the breakneck pace of development of the previous Seccombe administration. It has moved quickly to reverse those pro-developer pro-growth policies. The Bayside Bulletin of 28 April 2008 reports#main-fn6">6 that the new Mayor Melva Hobson plans to withdraw the council's draft planning strategy agreed to by the Seccombe administration which was to cater for an additional 55,000 new residents over the next 20 years, with a population of 188,000 in 2026.
Neverthless, as positive a development as this is, a few local Councils, on their own cannot hope to indefinitely stem the tide of population growth. If this is to happen, the Australian community will have to force the Federal Labor Government to re-think it's plans to increase our anual immigration intake to 300,000
See also: Water prices to surge of 19 June 08 in the Bayside Bulletin, The Australian's April fool's joke of 20 May, More chickens of population growth come home to roost in Queensland of 13 May 08, The Australian laments outcome of Queensland local government elections of 29 Mar 08, Water prices to soar of 15 May 2008
Footnotes
#main-fn1" id="main-fn1">1. #main-fn1-txt">↑ See also No Forced Amalgamations
#main-fn2" id="main-fn2">2. #main-fn2-txt">↑ See media release of 14 May downloadable as pdf file linked to from the Media Room of May 2008
#main-fn3" id="main-fn3">3. #main-fn3-txt">↑ See also More chickens of population growth come home to roost in Queensland of 13 May 08
#main-fn4" id="main-fn4">4. #main-fn4-txt">↑ See Water projects' $2.4b blowout in the Courier Mail, Water bills on the rise to pay for Queensland's $9bn grid in The Australian,
#main-fn5" id="main-fn5">5. #main-fn5-txt">↑ I can't cite the sources, but I have somewhere newspaper clippings of Anna Bligh congratulating herself and her Government on the progress of the construction of water grids in recent months. She anticipated being able to sell the Queensland Government's expertise in this field to other governments, presumably governments who had also created problems of overpopulation in the first place to be ‘solved’ with water grids.
#main-fn6" id="main-fn6">6. #main-fn6-txt">↑ State steps back on figures in the Bayside Bulletin of 28 Apr 08
Introducing "Biodiversity First"
No commitment to sustainable future by Rudd Government
Sustainable Population Australia media release, 17 May 2008
"With the announcement by Minister, Chris Evans, that Australia is opening its doors to a massive increase in unskilled migration, the last vestiges of any appearance that the Rudd Government is committed to environmental sustainability or social equity have been swept aside", said Dr John Coulter, National President of Sustainable Population Australia, today.
"The total intake is planned to exceed 300,000, the largest intake since the migration scheme started in 1947 according to Minister Evans."
Despite having been asked, Dr Coulter said that "Nowhere has the government answered the following questions:
- How does increasing our population by more than a million every three years make our climate change/greenhouse emission problem easier to solve?
- Every city in Australia is water stressed. How does increasing our population by an additional 5% every three years make our urban water problem easier to solve?
- It is doubtful whether in a climate changed, post peak oil world Australia can maintain water supply to its farmers. How does such rapid population growth make it easier to maintain our rivers, soils and food production?
- Australians have one of the highest per capita environmental impacts in the world. An increase in the Australian population has a larger global impact than the addition of a person just about anywhere else in the world. How does the Rudd Government morally justify increasing Australia's demand on the global environment at the expense of many peoples far less well off?
- Australia has an acute housing shortage. More and more Australians cannot afford the rising price of a house or rent. One of the main drivers of this situation has been clearly identified as our already high immigration intake. How does Kevin Rudd justify making this situation even worse for 'working families'?
- Australia has approximately 5% unemployment and another 5% of under employment. How does the Rudd Government justify bringing in unskilled workers when there are Australians unemployed and underemployed seeking work?
- There is a rapidly growing global food shortage. Increasing Australia's population is leading to more and more high quality, well watered, food producing land going under housing and related urban infrastructure. Where is Kevin Rudd's much advertised Christian morality?
This push for large population increase both by increased immigration and by measures to increase fertility rates lays bear the hollowness of the Rudd Government's claim to be concerned about the environment and environmental sustainability. It reveals a government saying one thing but, with no understanding of or thought for long term sustainability, relentlessly pursuing a greatly expanded business-as-usual course" concluded Dr Coulter.
For further information or comment: Dr John Coulter Tel: (08) 8388 2153
Debate on carbon trading needed
This was sent to me on 2 April.
Global warming, carbon trading and greenhouse gas emissions are something most people are too busy to stop and think about. When there is no fuel left for their four wheeled drives it will be too late!
Individual attempts to be carbon conscious, cut backs in energy and recycling are not enough to reduce emissions. Governments, industry and business sectors must make a concerted effort to find an effective solution to reduce their emissions since they are the largest perpetrators of CO2 emissions. Investment in clean coal is a fallacy (a leap in the dark). Clean coal is a mere excuse to keep the wheels of trade and profit for another decade. Carbon trading schemes are a means to allow this to happen. The greatest challenge facing government is to investment in new technology not, as present, in subsidies to the coal and oil industries.
The impact of an Emission Trading System for Individual Enterprises in the EU has far too many inconsistencies The EU over allocated trade off emissions to industry. Their scheme is a lesson to Australia. Poor commitment and a reluctant to engage in rules and guidelines or a lack of interest in the environment are just a few of the EU problems. Can we learn from the EEC experience? The EEC first phase of a carbon trading scheme did not include transport emissions but transport will be included in their second phase. Will Australia include transport in their first trading scheme? If not why not?
Carbon trading appears to be a very Catholic idea– the big corporations are encouraged to sell off indulgences for the right to continue polluting. This does not address the real increases in emissions or future consequences.
Australia’s emissions have increased over the last decade Australia is one of the highest per capita emissions of greenhouse pollution in the world today. It has been on the back foot since it refused to sign Kyoto Protocol ten years ago. The result is industrial emissions increased during that time and present policy will hardly bring us to the 1996 emission rate. Both government and industry’s priority to economic policies have failed to control emissions. The result is pollution escalates to crisis point while boom profits become immoral for the few and a disaster for the rest of the community.
Kyoto clearly identifies the reality of a need for a worldwide shift in thinking. Melting ice caps rising sea levels, drought, floods, and depletion of habitat, species, deforestation and wild weather patterns have increased insurances worldwide. The CEO of the RAC Insurance Mike McCarthy said “There is a doubt that the insurance industry will survive the increasing demands! Australia has no flood maps for natural disasters and recent flooding illustrated the huge problem for the insurance industry. Everyone must learn to adapt and innovate otherwise they may find they will not be covered by insurance in future,” he said. Planners need to make sure houses are sustainable build in safe places, not on the coastal edge, near rivers or wetlands that are likely to flood. It is time developers, local councils and State governments are forced to change their attitude towards coastal development.
The greedy have become greedier. Contracts are signed to dig up and ship out WA’s minerals as fast as possible. No one takes responsibility for increasing emissions or pressure on the natural environment. Meanwhile Australian governments and the corporations make huge profits and water and energy supplies are rapidly depleting.
We all have a moral obligation and responsibility to care for the earth. To move forward in the way we think, use energy and take advantage of new opportunities and technology, embrace new methods and skills. Solar has been a government policy failure in this land of sunshine. Failure is not an option we must move forward together as part of a global community.
Mary Jenkins
Spearwood Western Australian, ph 08 94182117
The Australian proposes apartheid 'solution' to Australia's labour shortage 'crisis'
In the article "Bring in the Chinese", of 14 May in The Australian newspaper Robert Leeson proposed what would effectively be an apartheid system involving imported chinese labourers. These workers are said to be needed to build necessary additional infrastructure. This infrastructure would enable Australia to help China further pollute its environment and fuel global warming with our mineral exports.
This article is yet another addition to the almost deafening crescendo preaching the necessity of yet more immigrant labour.
Chinese companies are expected to soon be awarded contracts to build some of the planned infrastructure, but to do this, Leeson argues, they will need to import Chinese labor as happened with the Tanzania-Zambia Railway, which was built by Chinese capital and labour.
If this is not done, he implies, an economic opportunity for Australia will be lost.
Leeson proposes a number of conditions to be met which he would have us believe answer all possible objections to the scheme:
- the projects must be subject to rigorous cost-benefit analyses;
- the contract winners might have to provide their own infrastructure (temporary accommodation etc);
- the winning tenders would have to abide by Australian health and safety standards;
- the tenders would have to include an incentive mechanism that would minimise the chances of imported workers overstaying their contract (for example, partial payment in the country of origin);
- the trade union movement would have to be persuaded that these arrangements were temporary responses to full employment, rather than a permanent source of competition to their members. Former ACTU president, Simon Crean is ideally placed to "perform an ... educational role with respect to infrastructure".
What Leeson is proposing effectively amounts to an apartheid system in the same way that 'immigrant' black workers from bantustans within South Africa once provided cheap labour for South Africa's mines and factories. However, if Leeson's plan fails, then it is not hard to imagine how this could lead to an effective invasion of parts of Australia. In the event of any future conflict with China, having such large numbers of foreign citizens on our own soil, would well pose a serious threat to our national security. An alarming statistic provided by this article, is that there are currently 150 million internal migrants in China, enough to overwhelm the current Australian population many times over. (Of course, because we are mostly Europeans and not Tibetans, drawing attention to this fact practically guarantees that this country's opinion-moulders will dismiss objections to Leeson's scheme as coming from an old troglodyte "yellow peril" school of thought.)
Solutions to the claimed labour shortage problem, other than that proposed by Leeson, could include:
- simply leave the raw materials in the ground, at least until such time as the necessary labour from within Australia can be found, or
- if we must dig up all of our minerals now then cut back on immigration and use the labour freed up from building the necessary houses to instead build the additional infrastructure. Another area of the economy which could be wound back is tourism.
However we eventually solve Australia's supposed economic difficulties, a calm discussion, in which all possible options are rationally considered taking into account all the environmental, social, economic and geo-political factors, will first be necessary.
See "Bring in the Chinese" 14 May 08 by Robert Leeson.
Rudd government to conduct 'review' as 457 visas as annual intake set to reach 130,000
The ABC reports that the Rudd Government has ordered a review of the 457 visa scheme for foreign workers.
The same report cites Heather Ridout of the Australian Industries Group warning against any action that might ‘stem the flow’ of workers to Australia.
Meanwhile, Jewel Topsfield of The Age reported yesterday that the number of 457 visas granted has jumped from 39,500 in 2003-04 to more than 100,000 in 2007-08.
Sounds like - far from being stemmed - the flow has become a flood.
The Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU) is running a campaign (see also below) on its web site against the abuse of 457 visas and points out the corrosive effect that the scheme is having on the employment of apprentices in Australia. It strikes me that whatever the causes of Australia’s skills crisis at present, one sure way of making it worse is to make it easier to engage skilled tradespeople from overseas as an alternative to taking on apprentices.
Anyone concerned about the effect that 457 visas are having on Australia's local skills base could do worse than to support the AMWU’s initiative (see below).
Roads to wildlife extinction: Vic Government, SEITA, Eastlink, in Victoria's South East
SEITA is the acronym for the Victorian Southern and Eastern Integrated Transport Authority which was formed by the Victorian Government to manage private public partnerships to build ... um... not free ways, but tollways. The Frankston bypass is part of the EastLink tollway.
According to information on the SEITA Eastlink site, the project route appeared in Melways street maps forty years ago.
(Photo by Narelle Smith)
Predictably, over this period wildlife habitat and populations have been severely impacted. Despite this the Victorian Government and SEITA seem to have failed to seriously consider several other routes, but are persevering in plans to bisect the Mornington Peninsula Biosphere and other crucial habitat for wildlife, according to Gillian Collins of the Pines Flora and Fauna Protection Group and Maryland Wilson of the AWPC.
Their preferred route begins with a major cut through The Pines Flora and Fauna Reserve which provides sanctuary vital to the AWPC and Coalition for Wildife proposed wildife corridor leading to and from the Peninsula Biosphere. For this the Victorian Government, SEITA and Eastlink, have been accused of failing to plan adequately to avoid significant impact on natural habitat and wildlife.
The paradigm of tollways has also been criticised as outmoded and economically unsound because it relies on road-transport and collecting tolls in an economy where many believe that all bets on road-traffic projections should be off because of looming oil and fossil fuel depletion. The motorway will collect tolls using ConnectEast tolling products. www.eastlink.com.au
EastLink decribes itself as "the largest urban road project ever constructed in the State of Victoria with a construction cost of $2.5 billion." It hopes to be "Victoria's second fully-electronic tollway" It will link "the Eastern Freeway in Mitcham with the Frankston Freeway in Melbourne's south-east" in a 39 km motorway.
Eastlink say that they are "one of the largest Public Private Partnerships ever undertaken in Australia." They hope to open on Sunday 29 June 2008.
The Southern and Eastern Integrated Transport Authority (SEITA) was established in 2003 to manage the EastLink Project on behalf of the Victorian Government.
SEITA managed the selection of the private sector bids and now oversees the State's ongoing interest in this landmark Project.
ConnectEast
In October 2004, ConnectEast was awarded the contract to fund, design, build, own and operate EastLink for a period of 39 years. ConnectEast was listed on the Australian Stock Exchange in November 2004.
Thiess John Holland
ConnectEast contracted Thiess John Holland to design and construct EastLink. Thiess John Holland is a joint venture between two of Australia's largest construction and engineering companies - Thiess and John Holland.
An advisory council was also set up with John Nicol, as 'Independent Chair', Janet Holmes à Court, Deputy Chairman; and Frank Corr, Northern Community Representative; Norman Galbraith, Central Community Representative; Geoff Griffiths, Southern Community Representative; Cr Mick Morland, Casey City Council; Mr Tim Tamlin, City of Greater Dandenong; Cr Colin Hampton, Frankston City Council; Mr Ian Bell, Knox City Council; Ms Lydia Wilson, Manningham City Council; * Cr Tony Dib, Maroondah City Council; Cr Craig Shiell, Monash City Council; Cr Tim Rogers, Mornington Peninsula Shire Council; Cr Chris Aubrey, Whitehorse City Council.
John Nicol, the Chair of the advisory council, is a city engineer with Werribee City, and was recently awarded the Order of Australia medal. John Pallas, Minister for Roads and Ports, commended his understanding of 'building a winning image', his ability and character in the following speech, recorded on Victorian Hansard.
The Human bottleneck
Perhaps the most urgent near-term issue for environmentalists is one that few yet talk about. It is what I call "the human bottleneck".
Just as the genus homo itself went through a bottleneck when all but one of its species vanished, and just as even that one survivor, homo sapiens, seems to have fallen at one point to less than 10,000 breeding pairs, so all other species on Earth will soon have to pass through a bottleneck as humans pass through what we hope will be a maximum population of about 9 billion, later this century. This will leave so little land and food for other species that many, perhaps most of them, will perish.
Note that the narrowest part of the bottleneck for other species will not necessarily come when the human population peaks. At that stage many, or even most humans will still be living in poverty but aspiring to affluence. Hence the squeeze on all other species will actually continue to get worse, and perhaps very much worse, after the human population peaks.
The assumption that world population could peak at approximately 9 billion is taken from
http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/idb/worldpopinfo.html
For the assumption that much of that population will still be pursuing increased consumption, and thus intensifying rather than relaxing the squeeze on other species, the author relies on his perception of common experience of human nature and of social inequalities.
You'll notice that the graph has such a small scale on the X axis (which covers 200,000 years) that one cannot read fine detail from it about values on the Y axis over the next 50 years (which would be speculative in any case) or the last 50. This suits, because the figures would vary according to what measures are used.
e.g. it is commonly said that humans now use some 40% of the Earth's primary production (i.e. plant food created from sunlight). But it does not follow that 60% of Earth's surface is freely available for other species, and I presume less than 20% is in virgin state. It also depends whether one includes the oceans. Virtually no part of the ocean surface is not harvested by fishermen, so this might put us as at present intensively harvesting the production of 80% of the planet rather than 40%.
Fortunately, as I say, the graph does not permit of reading its values in such fine detail over short periods --which is another way of saying that the overall shape remains the same pretty much regardless of what measure one uses for human domination.
Mark O'Connor CMC,
home page: www.australianpoet.com
Mark O'Connor is the author of This Tired Brown Land, Duffy and Snelgrove, NSW, 1994. He was Australia's Olympic poet for the year of the olympics in Sydney. He has published many books of poetry, much of it on ecological subjects.
Wildlife Campaigner: "SEITA preferred Frankston bypass route will severely impact wildife"
Maryland Wilson, President of the Australian Wildlife Protection Council, stated yesterday that the Southern and Eastern Integrated Transport Authority (SEITA) has failed to adequately address the concerns she raised on behalf of the Australian Wildlife Protection Council or the Coalition of Wildlife Corridors.
Wildlife campaigner says SEITA route for Frankston Bypass will severely impact wildlife
Maryland Wilson, President of the Australian Wildlife Protection Council, stated yesterday (May 14, 2008) that the Southern and Eastern Integrated Transport Authority (SEITA) has failed to adequately address the concerns for wildlife she raised on behalf of the Australian Wildlife Protection Council or the Coalition of Wildlife Corridors. These concerns were specifically about the threat posed to wildlife and their habitat by the infrastructure and traffic which will be created if the SEITA proposed bypass route goes ahead.
Ms Wilson said that the AWPC's observation as well as discussion with persons well-informed in road-engineering, population and land-use planning, Peninsula Biosphere maintenance, wildlife-ecology and social amenity leaves the AWPC in no doubt that
a) the proposed route will severely impact on scarce habitat for local, regional and State biodiversity
b) SEITA and the government have not seriously examined viable alternatives
c) the Pines draft master plan – part two and part three fail to remedy these problems
d) the Pines draft master plan suggestion of a connection between the parts of the Reserve it will split would only present a very insignificant mitigation of the overall drastic damage
e) the proposed restructuring and popularisation of the reserve inaccurately markets new and additional habitat-stress as habitat and wildlife friendly.
"Even worse", said Ms Wilson, "The proposed route will divide the Peninsula in two, making any hope of interconnecting wildlife corridors from East to West of the Peninsula impossible." "Plans for interconnecting corridors have been on the AWPC website now for over a year," she said.
The Wildlife campaigner explained that it is not acceptable for the government or its chosen contractors to go ahead with a structure which, despite some rhetorically supportive policies in Pines draft master plans, parts two and three, is in practice oppositional to international, Australian, and local practice and science for protecting the needs of wildlife.
She added that people needed to be made aware that, "At the moment Frankston and the Peninsula, although part of an international UNESCO agreement for a biosphere that protects fauna and flora, are facing unacceptable decimation of indigenous animals in all or most areas where they struggle to survive."
"Roads, through habitat fragmentation and isolation, through very high rates of road-kill, and through their spear-heading of suburban expansion, are the drivers of animal deaths and species loss."
President Wilson said that SEITA will only encounter and should only encounter opposition if it fails to use alternative routes to protect any indigenous fauna habitat from being cut off from the rest of the Pines, or indeed where similar fragmentation is threatened for any other habitats.
"Australian fauna is at greater risk than at any other time in history due to climate change, drought, habitat-fragmentation and annihilation. The need for more, not fewer, bio-links to save species and individual animals is critical."
"With regards to the other areas of Frankston and the Peninsula, if SEITA continues with the same lack of awareness as previous road-builders in this country, of the many modern methods for mitigating road-kill, such as bridges, tunnels and overpasses, then it cannot expect and will not deserve support."
Her concluding remark demonstrated that the AWPC has a more sophisticated awareness of economy perhaps than do investors in freeways and the governments which support such massive infrastructure projects:
"The population growth and urban expansion which SEITA and similar industry corporations rely on in Australia for customers and investors is not supported by the incumbent population and will probably become very problematical very soon due to oil depletion."
Maryland Wilson, President of the registered charity, Australian Wildlife Protection Council Inc., and spokesman for the Coalition for Wildlife Corridors can be contacted at kangaroo AT peninsula.hotkey.net.au or at 03 59788570, mobile 0417 148 501 The AWPC is located at 247 Flinders Lane Melbourne, Victoria 3000. For further details go to www.awpc.org.au
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