democracy

The following article has been adapted from the leaflet handed out at the weekly Vigil for Julian Assange in the evening of Friday 17 March 2023 at Melbourne's Flinders Street Station: Julian Assange, the multiple award-winning Australian journalist, has been imprisoned in solitary confinement for 23 hours per day in London's Belmarsh pr

Presentation by The Hon. Kelvin Thomson, Convenor of Planning Democracy, to Combined Residents of Whitehorse Action Groups, (CROWAG) Wednesday 15 February, Blackburn Lake Visitor Centre.

Update, 8 Feb 2023: I have received a reply from Josh Wilson and responded further below. They both now precede my original "Open Letter" of 6 February, which is further below.

Former PM John Howard's latest book, The Menzies Era, is not as you might expect, an exercise in right wing propaganda, or at least not overtly, but an historical account which jolts the mind back to things forgotten or chronologically misplaced, due to the passage of time.

Title was South Australia's Parliament to debate Julian Assange's plight this coming Wednesday - Why won't Canberra? Update, Sun 6 Nov 2022: Parliament will be sitting Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday this coming week.

At a protest for Julian Assange, which commenced outside the Victorian State Library at 12:00pm on Sunday 28 September, protestors demanded that the Australian government use the power vested in it as a sovereign national government to make British Prime Minister Liz Truss end the illegal imprisonment and torture of Julian Assange.

[Candobetter Editor: Sorry this report is being published very late, although it arrived on time.] In this issue: Federal Election 2022 - Climate Change, Corruption, Women, Young People; Australian Heritage Advocacy Advice; Royal Historical Society of Victoria Heritage Protection action; Urban consolidation and Housing Affordability; Good News at Kilmore; Wattle Park/The Effect of Night Lighting on Birds; Boroondara proposed Cycleway; VCAT Decision - Baker v.

Hi to you all, and particularly to those of you who I do not know. As you will have heard from Mary, I have agreed to take over as Convenor from Mary Drost OAM. In 2005 Mary established Planning Backlash as an umbrella organisation and coalition of community and resident action groups.

A major people's Inquiry into the costs and consequences of the US Alliance and Australian involvement in US-led wars has been launched. Why is this inquiry so different? Because it is not run by government. It is run for the people by the people. The Independent and Peaceful Australia Network (IPAN) has trumped most voluntary organisations by taking democratic power into its own hands. This people's inquiry was conceived of and agreed to by IPAN members and is run and officiated by volunteers, in cooperation with web news-site Independent Australia. You are invited to make a personal or organisational submission because they really want to know what you think about Australia's foreign policy. Please consider donating. The Inquiry was launched on 26th November 2020, and details can be found on the Inquiry website, namely https://independentpeacefulaustralia. In the video below, organising participants describe the aims and basic organisation of the inquiry. After some preliminary explanations, at 8.10 minutes into the video, Kellie Tranter, the Inquiry Chairperson, gives a great speech about why "Australia must reconsider its relationship with the U.S." We republish the transcript of her speech from her website. Other speakers follow.

Speech at the launch of IPAN’s US-Australia Alliance Inquiry, November 27, 2020 by Kellie Tranter.

[Republished from http://kellietranter.com/2020/11/speech-at-the-launch-of-ipans-us-australia-alliance-inquiry/]
Introduction

I’d like to begin by acknowledging the Traditional Owners of the land on which we meet today, and pay my respects to their Elders past, present and future.

May I thank IPAN, particularly Annette Brownlie, for inviting me to be a part of the first national public inquiry into the costs and consequences of the Australia-US Alliance.

May I also say what a privilege it is to be given the opportunity to work alongside the panel of experts Alison, Jeannie, Greg, Ian, Terry, Vince, Chad and Peter, who collectively bring such depth of knowledge, experience, wisdom, and energy to the conversation.

Our aim

Condensing the views of many experts to date on the direction in which we must head in terms of defence and foreign policy, the general consensus is that our aim is to:

- be a responsible independent middle power taking a more independent position with multilateral organisations;
- be respected internationally not only for our moral clarity, integrity and values but also for our domestic governance systems, constructive global activism and human rights advocacy, provided always that what we espouse must be consistent with what we practice at home;
- recapture our strategic independence;
- recognise the paramount importance of peace in the Pacific to our national interests;
- determine our own foreign policy, respecting other nations and interests but looking after our own interests;
- gradually downgrade military cooperation with the United States and involve the parliament and the people in the development of our foreign and defence policy;
- be self-starting and self-reliant rather than sitting back waiting for a friend who may not come;
- prioritise our own security;
- understand that our future lies in South East Asia and make our way in Asia ourselves. Develop a coalition of interests; and
- accept that we can’t squeeze China down and that Asia will not be shaped by US military force or economic measures.

Leadership

Achieving our aims requires leadership.

We are a competent people and should be a confident country. Our political leaders need to expend some political capital and time doing these things to prepare us for the new era that is dawning.

We need leaders with imagination, courage and intelligence, who will put the nation’s interests before their own. People who recognise that a time of change has come, who have sensible views about how it should be met and who can provide the leadership to drive change forward.

The current status

The current status is perhaps best summed up by Paul Keating when he said there’s “Nothing ever impressive about Australia’s Foreign Policy.”

We are a dependent middle power. We wait for signals from Washington before we speak.

There are not enough of our own foreign policy achievements. There are few examples of Australia deciding what it wants in the world, working out how to get there and taking steps to achieve that.

Australia is too closely tied to United States.

In July 2019 US made a $300 million push to expand naval facilities in the Northern Territory, with 2500 marines being rotated through Darwin in recent times.

It is unlawful and morally wrong to let another country take us to any war of aggression, but it is despicable to do so when those wars are based on lies and misinformation. Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria are the most recent examples.

Apropos Afghanistan, too little reflection has come now, following the release of the Brereton report. Immediately after the September 11 attacks the Howard government invoked the provisions of the ANZUS Treaty which references the United Nations Security Council in Articles I, IV and VI. UN Security Council resolutions 1368 and 1373 adopted before the US led invasion of Afghanistan on 7 October 2001 did not authorise the use of force and didn’t even mention Afghanistan. We now know that the US did not even seek specific legal support from the United Nations Security Council for its actions in Afghanistan.

The first Australian parliamentary debate about the war didn’t take place until October 2010, after we’d been there nearly a decade, and only after activists, lawyers, independent journalists, diplomats and humanitarian organisations had been publicly agitating for it.

A month later it was reported that the then Defence Minister, Stephen Smith, had cracked down on media coverage of the war in Afghanistan, gagging senior Defence Force officers and insisting that any media inquiries to the Defence Force be diverted to his office. Defence Force personnel were also barred from talking to the media during the parliamentary debate on the war.

The point missed by mainstream media is point 38 of the Brereton report which states that ‘the events discovered in this inquiry occurred within the ADF, by members of the ADF, under the command of the ADF. To the extent that the protracted and repeated deployment of the relatively small pool of Special Forces personnel to Afghanistan was a contributing factor – and it should be recognised that the vast majority of Special Forces personnel did repeatedly deploy to Afghanistan without resorting to war crimes- it was not a risk to which any government, of any persuasion, was ever alerted.’

If that is true, then the government has allowed Defence to operate independently on foreign soil and without proper supervision. That is culpable in itself and, even accepting that the principles of ministerial responsibility and of military chains of command meshed with responsibility seem to have been thrown by the wayside, cannot continue.

On 18 November Australia was still waiting for a decision from Trump on an Afghanistan troop withdrawal so we could follow suit even though our government was sitting on the horrific findings of the Brereton report which was released publicly the next day.

So we have a report saying there’s credible evidence our soldiers have committed war crimes and we’re still waiting on Washington to tell us what to do.

How many lives could have been saved if all individual members of parliament and the Australian people were permitted to air their concerns and openly evaluate strategies without consequences.

How many people know that we currently have troops serving in Iraq, the Persian Gulf, Somalia, the Golan Heights, the Sinai, Cyprus , South Korea, Afghanistan, the United Arab Emirates and in every single State of the United States, either serving or embedded.

My FOIs to find out precisely what we’re doing in the Golan Heights and the United States were declined.

One wonders what else Australia might have had knowledge of or been involved with overseas when in 2017- a year after it was first reported that retired Australian Major General Mike Hindmarsh was serving as a senior advisor for the United Arab Emirates forces engaged in conflict in Yemen – we voted against a UN resolution about the use of mercenaries as a means of violating human rights and impeding the exercise of the right of people to self-determination, and in September this year we voted against the implementation of the recommendations contained in the report of the UN Secretary General on the causes of conflict and the promotion of durable peace and sustainable development in Africa (A/RES/74/302).

We voted no and the African nations themselves voted yes. The same African nations we romanced for a time to secure a non-permanent seat on the UN Security Council, then abandoned, and whom we will have to court again when we next bid for a seat on the UN Security Council in 2029-30 given that for successful election to UN bodies African votes are key to reaching the required 2/3rds majority.

Australia’s position of doing everything it can to oppose the ban on nuclear weapons, because it believes we rely on US nuclear weapons as a deterrent, is well known but misguided. It naively ignores the grave risks of “nukes” to all people of the world, particularly the scope for human error to lead to devastation, and leads to an absurdly militaristic mentality as demonstrated last year when we voted against a UN resolution for further practical measures for the prevention of an arms race in outer space. That was no doubt because of our government’s longer running enthusiasm to ‘deepen our cooperation with the United States on hypersonics’.

Post-COVID Scott Morrison announced that Australia will ramp up defence spending to $270 billion over the next decade as the country prepares for a “post-COVID world that is poorer, more dangerous and more disorderly.

About $90bn of that will be spent on advanced new kit, including “hypersonic” weapons, fighter jets and a cyber warfare capability. Australia will also put its own spy satellites in space.

Richard Speier, a member of the adjunct staff at the non-profit, nonpartisan RAND Corporation warned of the proliferation risks of hypersonics:

‘Hypersonic missiles travel at a speed of one mile per second or more—at least five times the speed of sound. They are able to evade and conceal their precise targets from defences until just seconds before impact. This leaves targeted states with almost no time to respond….It could authorise the military rather than the national leadership to conduct retaliatory strikes, but this would raise the risk of an accidental conflict.

We are enmeshed in the United States military machine. In Brian Toohey’s book ‘Secret’ he states that the US requires almost all countries that buy its weapons systems, including Australia, to send sensitive components back to the US for repairs, maintenance and replacements without the owners being allowed access to critical information, including source codes, needed to keep these systems operating…Australia could not conduct operations requiring the use of its advanced weapons platforms for any length of time without US support….This means we could be defenceless if attacked, unless the US allows the Defence Force independent access to key operational components of fighter planes, missiles, submarines, surveillance systems and so on… ‘

Australia’s relationship with China, on the other hand, is at its lowest point since diplomatic relations were established in 1972. We bait and antagonise.

In a July 2020 survey of how urban, educated Chinese view Australia’s bilateral relations going forward, 49.5% of respondents said the United States is the biggest impediment.

No doubt fuelled by Murdoch media and politicians, a Pew Research poll on 6 October 2020 found that negative views of China increased most in Australia, where 81% now say they see the country unfavourably.

Unsurprisingly, Australia abstained from voting on the yearly UN resolution about combating the glorification of Nazism, neo-Nazism and other practices that contribute to fuelling contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance.

Australia’s justification for abstention can’t possibly be support for free speech and freedom of expression when its own citizen, Julian Assange, having exposed US war crimes, sits in a high security prison facing extradition to the United States where, according to US prosecutors, 1st amendment protections don’t apply to foreign journalists.

Our Government has done nothing and remains silent.

In terms of respect for international rules-based order, last year Scott Morrison criticised the UN and called it an unaccountable internationalist body. Australia was criticised for blocking progress at the UN climate conference in Madrid by trying to use carry over credits for beating Kyoto targets. We have long ignored international criticism of our treatment of asylum seekers and Indigenous Australians. We continue to permit the export of weapons and/or componentry to countries known for human rights. And we continue to abstain from votes calling for the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination.

Our Defence and foreign policies don’t seem to be underpinned by any strong or even substantial human rights values.

The path forward

I’m looking forward to the ideas generated by and through this Inquiry. The good news is that on the back of all I’ve said, there’s plenty of room for improvement in the defence – foreign policy space.

The first thing this requires is that Australia recognise and support the fact that diplomacy is vital to safeguarding our national interests. An annual spend of $28 billion on Defence compared to $1 billion on diplomacy is unsustainable and moronic. Not only that, but it has been reported that a numerical deficiency in strategically minded staff at DFAT has allowed Home Affairs and Defence Departments to step in and fill the strategic void.

The late former Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser warned that ‘If the United States goes to war in the Pacific we don’t have an option to stay out of it. That as it stands the Australian Prime Minister has no capacity to stand up in Parliament and say we’re going to pass this one by because of US troops in Darwin and presence of Pine Gap.

Fraser called it a “total betrayal of Australian sovereignty, the parliament and the people.”

He proposed giving the United States 6-12 months to put their troops somewhere else, and to pull out embedded troops where it would lead to a conflict of interest.

He said Pine Gap would be more difficult, suggesting we give the United States 4-5 years to replicate Pine Gap somewhere else but pull out Australian personnel so it becomes known that it is a US controlled base. Signal that we’re not complicit.

In considering Pine Gap it’s important to remember that Wikileaks released a U.S. Strategic Sites List of 300 sites critical to US national interests and that would critically impact on the US’s ability to defend itself. It did not include Pine Gap.

I would also add that Australia must demand that it be able to operate key Defence systems independently of the United States.

Professor of Strategic Studies at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre of the Australian National University, Hugh White, has already pointed out that in 10 years from now, China’s GDP will be US $42.4 trillion and America’s US $24 trillion, that money is power and that the United States will be unable to persuade or compel China to live within the rules of a regional order US has set and upheld for so long.

At a National Press Club meeting in August the Deputy head of mission for China’s embassy in Australia, Wang Xining, offered his embassy’s offices to get Ministers talking to each other. Assuming the Chinese wouldn’t adopt Australia’s approach to negotiations with East Timor and plant bugs, that sounds like a good place to start in terms of understanding, building relationships, testing each other and permitting criticism where necessary and warranted.

Australia needs a concerted effort to show it is serious about engaging with China. A strategy for enhancing Australian-Chinese relations. Possibilities might include a specific plan to open up dialogue, targeted Ministerial letters highlighting opportunities for engagement, the expansion of DFAT’s South East Asia expertise, investment in the expansion of our diplomatic network in China and it might, just might, help if the Prime Minister actually visited China.

Former Prime Minister Paul Keating sees the United States as a balancer or conciliator in South East Asia, bearing in mind the United States is on the other side of the world. A new President in the White House wanting to restore America’s international reputation may now offer us a chance to reset the current trajectory towards war with China, even if that desire is fuelled in part by his own or his family’s commercial self-interest.

I would like to end on climate change.

Within about a decade, dealing with the consequences of climate change will be the only game in town.

Dr Jaci Brown, research director at the CSIRO’s climate science centre, says that in 10-20 years’ time, our 2019 climate will not be seen as unusual and that this decade will be one of the coolest in the next hundred years.

The recent Bushfire Royal Commission report noted that warming over the next two decades is baked in. If we start acting now containment is the best likely outcome.

Action on climate change is in our national interests and defence procurement must align with that purpose. Needless to say it is my view that it’s pure insanity for the Federal government not to endorse the key recommendation of the Bushfire Royal Commission to create its own aerial water-bombing fleet.

At least Defence seems to be close to the head of the pack in terms of awareness and concern.

In a 2019 speech General Campbell warned that “In about 10 years from now global warming above pre-industrial levels is set to rise by 50%. At 1.5 degrees of warming we can expect more significant impacts. Particularly in regards to oceans, low-lying areas and human health. The poor and most vulnerable will be hardest hit. Livelihoods lost. Food scarce. Populations displaced. Diseases spreading. And this now looks like our best-case scenario…”

My views on political failure to deal with climate change and the over-reliance on Defence to deal with its consequences are well known.

By itself, Defence will not be able to cope with the likely concurrent events, and one can only assume the same problem exists for the United States.

Indeed the Pentagon is planning for extreme temperatures, collapsing countries, wars on multiple continents and simultaneous natural disasters in circumstances where there are not enough troops to defend the United States and to address foreign catastrophes. In short, a substantial degradation of the ability to deal with conventional military problems, but in the context of a demonstrated inability of the United States government to respond properly, in terms of both logistics and capacity, to its own domestic crises. The problem was clear after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, but its tragic depth only really surfaced in the parlous lack of response to the ongoing COVID nightmare.

One must ask, if a situation arose where the US has to choose between allocating scarce military resources between preserving one of its imperial conquests and dealing with an out of control crisis at home, would the exceptionalist American psyche permit the embarrassment of an overseas withdrawal of an occupying force.

Mother Nature will almost certainly force our hand to navigate our own way forward independently of the United States. We shouldn’t wait for a crisis to get us to that point: we had better begin planning our route while it’s still light.

Thank you

In this article, Sally Pepper proposes that there is an economy with a small 'e' and The Economy with a big 'E'. As well as threatening its survival, COVID-19 has called the big E economy into question. Sally says, "The economy with a small 'e’ is a way of describing what we do. The Economy with a capital “E” is something we serve, whether we like it or not. To please The Economy we have to behave in such a way that it looks its best and is pleased with itself. The Economy seems to be like a teenage boy, with a voracious appetite. It never develops beyond the need to grow bigger, endlessly. It is like a monster that we have given rise to and are doomed to cater to forever."

The corona virus has been really bad for “The Economy.” We can tell that from the falls in global stock markets over the past few weeks. Those whose wealth is in stocks are now poorer or at least not as rich. The stocks have fallen, mainly, I assume, because of smaller earnings, due to decreased activity and, therefore, anticipation of lower or no dividends for shareholders. There are of course winners and losers, but the indices are telling us clearly where the stock market has headed.

Air, land,and sea traffic, have all diminished, globally. Traffic within cities, towns regions, and countries, has also diminished, as people comply with lockdown requirements. This means that less fossil fuel is being burned, and so there are fewer emissions, and clearer skies have been noted in many cities of the world.

The kinetic aspect of humanity has been toned down. Movement has slowed. Less work is being done, at least less of the work that went into earning money. People are now working on projects at home that they have been postponing for years for lack of time. This transfer of effort is very bad for The Economy.

Shops, other than supermarkets, pharmacies, and other outlets for essential goods, are now closed. Restaurants, clubs , sporting facilities, and gyms, are now closed . Workers have been laid off, but the government has chipped in to provide a living income to those expected to return to their previous employment, when life returns to normal. I assume those employees are now catching up with cleaning the bathroom, weeding the garden, planting seasonal vegetables and having time to think………as I am

Immigration and travel have stopped. Foreign nationals and non-residents are not allowed into the country and returning nationals have to spend two weeks supervised in isolation in hotels before going to their place of residence, which is where we are all in various states of isolation. The frenetic pace of growth has slowed to a near standstill If this new state of affairs were to continue, it would mean a rest from construction and road works, and less destruction of trees and gardens in the urban areas of Victoria. We are, in fact, headed for that most dreaded economic state of affairs - a recession. This translates into a very sick Economy! Might The Economy even die?

We, however, will still go on living, as long as we escape the clutches of the virus.

What will life be like? We already have some idea, as we are now living it and have already started changing. We could, in future, turn our focus to more essential activities, like gardening and producing food, doing repairs around our homes to ensure they remain standing and weather-proof, and sewing masks to protect us from the virus. We might start to get creative in the community sense, growing and exchanging produce. We could get to know our neighbours, who we have been too busy to speak to hitherto. We could learn from the alternative fringe of future-focused urban farmers, tucked away in newly gentrified inner northern suburbs, or in the less fashionable outer suburbs of Melbourne, or in the nearby countryside. These re-born farmers are generous with their knowledge, which can also be found on sites such as Face Book and You Tube.

With the loss of jobs, many renters have been left in the position of not being able to pay the rent. This is a problem for the renter and the landlord, especially if the landlord is making payments to a bank. In normal times, with hundreds of thousands of people entering Australia every year, the landlords would have their choice of paying tenants, but with the human avalanche stopped in its tracks, the landlord might just have to negotiate with both his bank and the tenant, for a mutually agreed outcome, and as little stress as possible. As we are being told in the mainstream media, “We’re all in this together.”

It seems to me that even if things do not go back to normal we can work out a new way of operating – something we negotiate amongst ourselves.

But am I being inconsiderate of The Economy?

An economy, at its most fundamental, is the sum total of the commercial activity or exchanges that happen between us. In the absence of overarching forces, we will work it out, especially if we have to. Economic activity will not cease, but it will be fit for purpose. I would call this our "economy with a small ‘e’". This economy is not our monarch or our religion, and it is not something we must serve. Our society, behaving in our own best interests, creates this economy. The economy with a small 'e’ is a way of describing what we do. The Economy with a capital “E” is something we serve, whether we like it or not. To please The Economy we have to behave in such a way that it looks its best and is pleased with itself. The Economy seems to be like a teenage boy, with a voracious appetite. It never develops beyond the need to grow bigger, endlessly. It is like a monster that we have given rise to and are doomed to cater to forever.

Do we really need this demanding perennial teenager, The Economy? Or can we just get on with our lives and let it become a decent citizen and part of our community?

At Frankston Council meeting on 29 January 2020, Cr Hampton sought by means of a Notice of Motion (NoM) to overturn council's decision of 14 Oct 2019 to adopt a revised Draft Green Wedge Management Plan. The NoM sought to investigate an excision of part of Frankston's Green Wedge for an expansion of the Carrum Downs Industrial Precinct. The NoM was voted down by Crs McCormack, Aitken, O'Connor, Toms and Mayor Mayer, (five of the nine). Cr Bolam abstained. [Ed. Note: A correction to this article on who voted it down was made on 30 January 2020.]

Frankston commentator Michele writes: "We could not have done this without wonderful Planning Backlash, WeCanDoBetter, Defenders of South East Green Wedge , Facebook posters, advisers and supporters, and speakers from Frankston Beach Association, South East Green Wedge, Frankston Environmental Friends Network and the community. Unknown numbers of people emailed councillors. Those opposing the NOM (Notice of Motion) with presentations had loud encouragement from the gallery."

Cr Hampton reportedly stated incorrectly that his NOM was increasing the minimum lot size in Rural Conservation Zone 1 and was not proposing a reduction in lot sizes elsewhere. He reportedly later apologised privately for getting it wrong, blaming Officer error.

The CEO assured councilors that tomorrow, without delay, the Management Plan would go to the Planning Minister for an amendment to the Planning Scheme to have the GWMP introduced as a reference document.

Michele concludes: "You are all so wonderful and inspiring in your fervor to protect our environmental values and not let vested interests always have the upper hand. The biggest thank you to all of you. Of course, the winner is the Green Wedge, its special values and features. Let's hope they endure and improve.

The late Barry Ross of S.E. Green Wedges must be smiling!"

This book aims to talk truth to power, using intersectionalist feminist concepts, within the strange paradigm of the corporate newsmedia [1] and US-NATO foreign policy. Power is identified as whiteness. White women are enjoined to stand with women of colour against male whiteness, which they are charged with propping up for their own benefit.

Whiteness is defined as non-brown and non-blackness. But brown-ness can include whites who are not the ‘right kind of pale’.

“Whiteness is more than skin colour. It is, as race scholar Paul Kivel describes, ‘a constantly shifting boundary separating those who are entitled to have certain privileges from those whose exploitation and vulnerability to violence [are] justified by their not being white.’” [2]

Hamad accuses white women in Australia today of endorsing non-white slavery and colonialism now and through the ages because they benefited and benefit from it. She writes as if the accused white women are conscious that their attitudes condone such slavery. I would say, however, that the class that endorses these things that are decided by their ‘betters’ does so because its members believe the government and corporate media spin that justifies war, colonialism and exploitation of peoples far away. The women (and men) in the classes the system still works for, or who believe it still works for them, are obedient and unquestioning of authorities anointed by these. Such people erupt in defence of media-anointed authorities they believe to be pillars of virtue. They will also hotly defend the ideas and values they receive from these classes.

Of course, various forms of psychopathic entitlement underlie the public rationales of our leaders for colonialism and wars. These include xenophobic assumptions or just contempt for anyone standing against what empire builders and weapons lobbies want. You would think that anyone could see through these, but they don’t. Obedient Australians respond viscerally to their masters, on whom they depend, like good dogs conditioned by rewards and punishments. Hence they easily fall for the suspicious perpetual recurrence of ‘mad and brutal dictators’ in the Middle East, whom the west must get rid of through regime change. As Dr Jeremy Salt, Middle-East scholar says to cartoonist Bruce Petty (who visited Syria in 2011) in the video below (which I made), "There always has to be a madman in the Middle East" [so that the west can have an excuse to invade.]

The greater basis for their credulity is apparently the idea that the Middle East has not ‘developed’ sufficiently to achieve lawful societies, in part because it is religiously divided and lacks the separation of church and state. No relevant history is provided by the newsmedia as to how these things came about in formerly very stable societies.

Additionally, the newsmedia seems to report on overseas 'interventions' in the most confusing manner possible, as it also does with Australian politics. This leaves the Australian classes that rely for information on the newsmedia with the idea that domestic and foreign politics are incredibly complicated and hard to follow. Bored and helpless, they see no choice but to place their faith in the imagined greater intellects of the journalists and politicians involved in producing this atrocious spin.

I find it difficult, however, to agree with the assumption in Hamad’s argument that all white women (and men) in Australia accept the doctrine of the newsmedia. There seem to be plenty of men and women in Australia who question war, invasion, mass population movements, Julian Assange's imprisonment for exposing war-criminals, and think that sovereignty should be respected, but they don't find any clear echo in the newsmedia, except sometimes in masses of negative comments on line, especially on articles promoting population growth. Those commenters cannot, however, get in touch with each other to organise. Constant demographic, employment, and land-use changes have also interrupted traditional family and neighbourhood networks, and big business has taken over the universities, as the newsmedia has taken over the public talking stick. So, if you believe that the newsmedia represents the opinions of most Australians, as Hamad seems to, I think you would be wrong.

There is still an anti-war movement, but it is very disorganised, almost certainly because the mainstream media ceased to report its point of view leading up to and after the invasion of Iraq. [3] The anti-war movement exists in the alternative media, both Australian and overseas. (See IPAN (and here) for instance.) Unfortunately, spontaneous voluntary movements using independent and big tech media resources still do not have nearly the same publicity reach of the newsmedia nor the power to authoritatively self-anoint. The Facebook tech-machine geographically limits Australians to Australia when using its promotion system (ads) for criticism of corporate newsmedia talking points and government policies (especially those of the US). They thus continue to be drowned out by the internationally syndicated newsmedia. The greater public, whose smart screens and phones are still commercially tuned to the corporate newsmedia are thus not aware of these other views. They are only aware of them if they use independent search engines, since smart phones and screens have licence restrictions on what they can show. Whilst it is easy to simply put a URL in a browser, most people don’t know this and children are not even taught it. They might use search engines to look for alternative reports, but they are not aware that the license restrictions of the commercial software associated with their ‘smart’ electronic hardware, keep their information sources nearly as narrow as the pre-internet era.

But Hamad is a professional newsmedia journalist. Not only is she a newsmedia journalist, but she refers to what passes for Australian cultural belief and 'leftist' values in the newsmedia as if these were actual reflections of most of Australian society, rather than a sort of echo-chamber for the classes that read and write in them. Does she really believe in the cultural matrix that she refers to, or is she merely using its own language to question it?

SYRIA

Of particular interest to me was Hamad's experience in questioning Australia's support for US-NATO military intervention in Syria. If you weren't already aware of the shocking wrongness of our policy towards Syria, then you might wonder what Hamad is talking about here.

Hamad, who comes from a Lebanese and Syrian background (Greater Syria), and who still has relatives in Syria, describes how she was rebuffed when she tried to express her disapproval of a US intervention in Syria to her feminist white colleagues.

"[Syria] is such a fraught issue that genuine discussion is impossible while smears and misplaced outrage are the norm. On this occasion in early 2018, I felt compelled to say something as it was the day after US president Donald Trump launched strikes on Damascus following an alleged chemical attack on a rebel-held town. Anna [her Anglo-Australian friend] expressed support for the strikes in a post, which I found jarring, and I told her - calmly - that I was confused given that the United States' act signalled a possible escalation of the conflict and further suffering. I was rebuffed as an aggressor who was hurting her and had to be publicly humiliated for it: the damsel requires her retribution. Merely by letting Anna know that although I understood she cared for Syrian civilians, her stance was disappointing to me, I inadvertently unleashed a demonstration of strategic White Womanhood that brushed aside the actual issue - the air strikes - and turned it into a supposed attack by me on her 'just for being white'. The result was a torrent of abuse hurled at me on a Facebook thread." (Pp105.)

Hamad’s analysis of this exchange is that, rather than deal with the political issue of bombing Syria and the atrocious consequences of war, [Anglo-Australian] Anna seemed to interpret the questioning of Hamad’s views on foreign policy as an attack on Anna for being 'white'.

Hamad sees this as a way of avoiding the issue. She thinks that the motive for avoiding the issue is to preserve the status quo from which White Womanhood benefits.

I think this analysis would work better if we substituted the word 'consequence' for motive, because it is hard for me to believe that most Australians who defend US-NATO policy towards Syria do this with a conscious understanding of the issues. Unless they are actually heads of government/ selling weapons, of course.

Where would they acquire such an understanding? Only by venturing beyond the Anglosphere and Eurosphere mainstream, but they have been repeatedly and explicitly conditioned to avoid alternative perspectives like RT and Presstv Iran, and the many independent blogs, in various languages, as ‘fake news’ by that very mainstream. It’s effective wedge politics; middle class Australians hardly dare look over at the other side of the fence on any issues. And, as mentioned, their smart screens have licensing issues.

It is true, however, that by blindly defending official policies, the obedient classes defend that tiny power-elite that pursues those policies consciously and pollutes our public messaging system with false reasons for war.

But, you see, I have encountered just the same kind of reaction when I have criticised military intervention in Syria. My friend’s father expostulated that we were ‘extremists’ and accused his son of falling for ‘fake news’. Mainstream journalists regard you with horror and abhorrence. On-line such views are treated as highly eccentric and laughed at, except when sympathisers find them. Most people you meet have no idea whatsoever about what you are referring to.

Politicians claim not to know anything about foreign affairs or they ignore you. I would have liked it if Hamad had gone to the role of Australia's then foreign policy minister, a [white] woman - Julie Bishop - in officially supporting US policy in Syria. Along with others, I wrote to Bishop about this, but received absolutely no response. And I wrote an article about the absurdity of it all: "Can Trump dodge his deep state destiny by acting absurdly?" Now it is quite possible that Julie Bishop had no idea of the consequences of what she was supporting, but she had direct responsibility, and a duty to inform herself. The reason I would like Hamad to address the role of a successful white female politician on Syria is because such people are elected and propped up via the false rhetoric of the newsmedia. That is how the normalisation of aggression against Syria takes place.

I know also that Syrians who hold the same attitude as me often don’t dare express it in public, and sometimes among Syrian acquaintances. Why is this? One reason is that refugees from Syria are more likely to receive encouragement from the Australian government if they say that the Syrian Government is a brutal dictatorship, even if they don’t really think so, since that is the official opinion of the Australian Government. And I have been told that quite a few Syrians in Australia actually do sympathise with the so-called Rebel armies in Syria, and so you might think twice about denouncing them or even disagreeing with them. New Zealand, our close neighbour, has settled some members of what many believe is a fake Syrian rescue group, with ISIS sympathies,the White Helmets. [4] Whilst I agree with Hamad that bombing Syria was a terrible idea, note that I am not saying that Hamad holds the same views on Syria as me. She does not actually disclose her views in her book.

It also sounds as if ‘Anglo-Australian’ Anna was out of her depth and was responding to a loss of ‘face’ on Facebook. That Anna then accused Hamad of being racist towards her is for me a symptom of Australia’s contamination with US race-baggage, not surprisingly, because of massive syndication of Australian newsmedia with US newsmedia, which virtually blots out Australia itself.

Whilst it is true that Australia was founded on the dispossession and genocide of non-white hunter gatherers, with some enslaved, others religiously indoctrinated, its initial principle labour source was convicts from the Irish, Scottish, Welsh and English lower classes. Most of these people would, however, meet Hamad’s definition of non-white, because land-tenure and inheritance law disqualified them from white power. They came from a country of severe class division. People there stole in order not to starve. As an example, the numbers of Irish transported soared with the Irish potato famine, due to crimes committed from hunger. [5]

Numerous convicts were charged with sedition and similar crimes and sent here as punishment for agitating for democratic government. [6] Many Irish were transported for insurrection due to their participation in revolts against the English. Convicts had no rights and could die in brutal conditions. [7]

Transportation of revolutionaries and protesters to the ends of the earth was an extreme form of demographic and political atomisation in Britain. Australia was Britain’s gulag and she sent a lot of people there who might otherwise have made a greater difference to British politics. Many recent Australians and mainstream journalists seem to have no knowledge of this or of the biophysical limitations of this continent. [8]

We do Australia a disservice if we fail to remember that people in this country initiated the Eight Hour Day, and stopped the beginnings of a slave-trade in Pacific Islanders and outlawed that of other ‘non-white’ peoples.

Australian workers at the turn of the 19th century, having ended transportation of forced ‘white’ labour, noting the kidnapping of Pacific Islanders, also rejected ‘non-white’ slavery through the White Australia policy, which was a trade-off for allowing manufacturers to import foreign goods. [9] Worker reasons for this would have been economic, since unpaid work presents unfair competition to free people. Unsurprisingly, just as today, we have little record of what ordinary people had to say on the matter, however. The rhetoric that we retain from the time is, of course, only from elites. Even among the elites, there was a fair amount of abolitionism, especially regarding the cessation of convict labour. The lack of contemporary documentation has made it easy to promote a view of the White Australia policy as a kind of Nazi doctrine, but it is dishonest to omit the anti-slavery and industrial relations aspects.

Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch of 1970, galvanised the Australian and international feminist movements, completely redefining how women saw themselves. Yet today Greer is hardly mentioned in the revisiting of feminism. Between 1972 and 1975 the Whitlam Government promoted multiculturalism, birth control, and feminism in the general population. These values were widely adopted in the generation now called ‘baby boomers’. Bizarrely and unfairly, recent anti-racist and mainstream feminist promotions fail to recognise, let alone build, on these well-established Australian values.

It might achieve more if articulate people like Hamad would look, beyond the mainstream representation of Australia, for similarities, rather than differences with their fellow citizens. She writes of the battle for land-rights (p.216). We need her help, because the colonisation is ongoing here. The fight for land-rights is being lost in Australia to the ultra-rich. Other Australians are fighting many different battles to resist our leaders’ addiction to war and growthism, and to preserve this beautiful country and its beleaguered ecology against land-speculation, overdevelopment and overpopulation. But they are being drowned out by the massive volume of the mainstream corporate media, which assails us all with growthist propaganda day and night, and also accuses us of racism, with the effect of shutting up criticism of absurdly high rates of immigration. As well, by appearing to champion or demonise refugees and asylum-seekers, it takes the public debate away from the regime-change wars that generate these.

Hamad argues within what I see as an anthropocentric, black-white, pseudo-‘progressive’ paradigm, without biophysical reference points. Although, at the end, she questions the idea of chronological progress, she still seems to accept the paradigm that we are all ‘going forward’, although no “progress is ever assured”. The points of reference in her universe are largely human-notional, generalised and global, whereas I look at how humans interact with their biophysical environments within specific land-tenure and inheritance systems. Along the same lines as Walter Youngquist’s paradigm in Geodestinies, I see material wealth, war, and colonisation, as a reflection of geology and geography.

I have a land-tenure and inheritance system explanation for the British class system and its production of great quantities of landless labour, which fed into a fossil-fueled coal and iron industrial revolution that permitted Britain’s industrial-scale exploitation of other countries. (See Sheila Newman, Demography Territory Law 2: Land-tenure and the origins of capitalism in Britain, Countershock Press, 2014.)

In Europe one tribe enslaved another. The Romans enslaved the British. Six hundred years later, the Normans reduced much of the British population to serfdom. They imposed almost universal male primogeniture in England, which meant that English women relied on men due to their inability to inherit land, and the bulk of children were effectively disinherited.

The British practised colonisation, mass migration, and genocide of Catholic whites in Ireland, and despoiled that land, with Henry VIII and Elizabeth I egging on the removal of nearly every tree for wood. Cromwell awarded Irish land to his English soldiers.

Many times the Irish Catholics tried to free themselves from the English, finally rising in revolt in 1798, causing civil war.

The civil war was dogged by savage sectarian differences which added their own violence to the government’s ghastly atrocities. Many Irish Ulster Protestants sided with the British. [10]

Irish Revolutionary leader, Wolfe Tone, described a landscape “on fire every night” (from burning houses), echoing with ‘shrieks of torture’, where neither sex nor age were spared, and men, women, and children, were herded naked before the points of bayonets to ‘starve in bogs and fastnesses’. He said that dragoons slaughtered those who attempted to give themselves up as they put down their weapons, and, finally, he talked about the spies who had brought the Irish Revolution down.

“And no citizen, no matter how innocent and inoffensive, could deem himself secure from informers.” [11]

I think that Hamad’s lack of recognition of inter-white racism/classism prevents her from realising that Australia is being recolonised, with ‘diversity’ as the excuse and induced racial schisms as the mechanism to alienate the ‘diverse’ from the incumbent population, the better to over-rule democracy. Australians, despite multicultural policy from Whitlam's time, are stigmatised as white and racist. There is a token nod to Aborigines, whose defining culture can in no way benefit from mass immigration or the 'developed' economy.[12] Hamad is not alone in this complacency because the mass-media constantly massages high immigration and renormalises terra nullius. Hamad has some recognition of this ‘irony’, however.

“I’d be lying if I said I knew how to reconcile all of this. I’m well aware that whatever our own experiences of colonisation and racism-induced intergenerational trauma, non-Indigenous people of colour in Australia are also the beneficiaries of indigenous dispossession. We too live on and appropriate stolen land.” (p.195)

Much of the foreign intervention in Syria has been in order to force it to accept globalisation, privatisation, and leaders sympathetic to these. The same thing is being forced on Australia, but without the need for overt violence so far because, unlike Syria, Australian leaders have not resisted this. And the newsmedia has given no voice to those who are trying to resist it, so they appear invisible.

Frizzy hair

On a more personal note, I sympathise with Hamad’s experience dealing with frizzy hair during her teenage years (p.180). I had the same problem. I had a different method, which did the same job. I didn’t brush my hair dry for hours, I wound it round my head tightly and fixed it painfully with bobby pins and other clamps, waiting hours for it to dry. I gave up swimming for years, although prior to becoming aware of my appearance, I had swum daily. This was a great sacrifice. Although I was also trying to meet the prevailing standards, which seemed to me to be straight hair, unlike Hamad, I did not identify straight hair with being ‘white’. I was ‘white’ if you like, although descended from Irish, Scottish, and Welsh stock, just not in the ‘in’-crowd as regards hair – or many other things.

A theme in Hamad’s book is that White Women get cross if you challenge their cultural ideas. They shut you out. Hamad has shown that some of these cultural ideas are probably immoral, and she wonders why she is shut out for exposing them. The thing is that all cultures want to control their ideas from the inside and they reject outside challenges. That’s poesis. Basically, to be one of them, you have to embrace their ideology.

Then, within that culture, there are sub-cultures, and cliques. In Australia’s hard new society where seniority and local labour have been dropped and ‘meritocracy’ prevails in an increasingly precarious employment market, women tend to form groups led by the woman closest to power – often a male boss. One of the ways for the dominant women to keep order and stay at the top is to punish anyone who looks like getting close to power by pretending to have been victimised. Another way is to harp on differences, of which ‘race’, ethnicity, religion, hair-type, weight, dress, and opinion, etc are all signs that can be used to define their possessor as a member of the out-group.

This kind of behaviour is also called ‘bullying’. And it is getting worse, unfortunately. Maybe it is a reflection of the way our leaders behave and the economic rationalist anti-society they have forced on us. There is competition out there for food and power. And we are apes.

NOTES

[2] Ruby Hamad in her Author’s note, p.xiii.

[3] “After the enormous demonstrations against the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the anti-war movement disappeared almost as suddenly as it began, with some even openly declaring it dead. Critics noted the long-term absence of significant protests against those wars, a lack of political will in Congress to deal with them, and ultimately, apathy on matters of war and peace when compared to issues like health care, gun control, or recently even climate change.” Source: Harpootlian, Allegra, US Wars and military action: The New Anti-War Movement, https://www.thenation.com/article/tom-dispatch-new-anti-war-movement-iraq-iran/.

“Criticism of the news media’s performance in the months before the 2003 Iraq War has been profuse. Scholars, commentators, and journalists themselves have argued that the media aided the Bush administration in its march to war by failing to air a wide-ranging debate that offered analysis and commentary from diverse perspectives. As a result, critics say, the public was denied the opportunity to weigh the claims of those arguing both for and against military action in Iraq. We report the results of a systematic analysis of every ABC, CBS, and NBC Iraq-related evening news story—1,434 in all—in the 8 months before the invasion (August 1, 2002, through March 19, 2003). We find that news coverage conformed in some ways to the conventional wisdom: Bush administration officials were the most frequently quoted sources, the voices of anti-war
groups and opposition Democrats were barely audible, and the overall thrust of coverage favored a pro-war perspective. But while domestic dissent on the war was minimal, opposition from abroad—in particular, from Iraq and officials from countries such as France, who argued for a diplomatic solution to the standoff—was commonly reported on the networks. Our findings suggest that media researchers should further examine the inclusion of non-U.S. views on high-profile foreign policy debates, and they also raise important questions about how the news filters the communications of political actors and refracts—rather than merely reflects—the contours of debate.” Source: Hayes, Danny and Guardino, Matt, Whose Views Made the News? Media Coverage and the March to War in Iraq, Political Communication, Vol. 27, No. 1, Dec 2009, p59. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/10584600903502615
“As the [Iraq] war dragged on, and as reporting got better and better, the real problem with news from Iraq would turn out to be how little of it most Americans ever saw or heard. Across the board, as documented by Pew and others, the percentage of the news hole devoted to the war declined steeply.” Source: Murphy, Cullen, The Press at War, From Vietnam to Iraq, Atlantic Monthly, March 20, 2018.
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/03/iraq-war-anniversary/555989/

[4] Independent journalists who have criticised this US and UK-funded and Hollywood-iconified group have been vilified by the mainstream, but the evidence is out there. See, for instance, Rick Sterling, “The ‘White Helmets’ Controversy,” Consortium News,
July 22, 2018”https://consortiumnews.com/2018/07/22/the-white-helmets-controversy/

[5] Lohan, Rena, Archivist, ‘Sources in the National Archives for research into the
transportation of Irish convicts to Australia (1791–1853)’ National Archives, Journal of the Irish Society for Archives, Spring 1996 https://www.nationalarchives.ie/topics/transportation/Ireland_Australia_transportation.pdf

[6] Convict Records, British Convict transportation register made available by the State Library of Queensland, Various crimes were assigned to revolutionaries, including sedition and insurrection which included many Irish who participated in rebellions. I08 are listed in the Convict Records simply as ‘Irish Rebels’: https://convictrecords.com.au/crimes/sedition https://convictrecords.com.au/crimes/irish-rebel

[7] “During the first 80 years of white settlement, from 1788 to 1868, 165,000 convicts were transported from England to Australia. Convict discipline was invariably harsh and often quite arbitrary. One of the main forms of punishment was a thrashing with the cat o’ nine tails, a multi-tailed whip that often also contained lead weights. Fifty lashes was a standard punishment, which was enough to strip the skin from someone’s back, but this could be increased to more than 100. Just as dreadful as the cat o' nine tails was a long stint on a chain gang, where convicts were employed to build roads in the colony. The work was backbreaking, and was made difficult and painful as convicts were shackled together around their ankles with irons or chains weighing 4.5kg or more. During the day, the prisoners were supervised by a military guard assisted by brutal convict overseers , convicts who were given the task of disciplining their fellows. At night, they were locked up in small wooden huts behind stockades. Worse than the cat or chain gangs was transportation to harsher and more remote penal settlements in Norfolk Island, Port Macquarie and Moreton Bay.” Source: State Library New South Wales, https://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/stories/convict-experience

[8] Recently an Australian Review journalist, Laura Tingle, suggested that convicts seemed almost more inclined to die of starvation than to try to feed themselves by farming. She obviously knew nothing of the difficulties experienced by the early settlers, even with the help of convicts, in producing food in this country, well-documented by Watkin Tench, (e.g. Ed Tim Flannery), Watkin Tench, 1788, 2012. Tingle, in Laura Tingle, "Great Expectations" in Quarterly Essay, Issue 46, June 2012, opines that Australian government began by administering a dependent population in a patronising way. Australians became passive recipients of government benefits - to the extent, Tingle believes, that convicts seemed almost more inclined to die of starvation than to try to feed themselves by farming. Moreover, after the gold rush, Australian men got the vote and could run for parliament whether or not they had property and the quality of politicians declined compared to that when only people with property could vote. In these circumstances, politicians with poor manners came to dominate parliament and Australians therefore lost respect for their politicians. See Sheila Newman, “Tingle shoots blanks despite Great Expectations - review of Quarterly Essay,” 8 July 2012, http://candobetter.net/node/3003

[9] An ammendment to the Masters and Servants Act August 1847 forbade the transportation of ‘Natives of any Savage or uncivilized tribe inhabiting any Island or Country in the Pacific Ocean’. Masters and Servants Act 1847 (NSW) No 9a. No.IX., 16 August 1847. Six weeks later a Legislative Council motion disapproved the prospect of introducing Pacific Island workers into the colony, because it “May, if not checked, degenerate into a traffic in slaves.” https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2019/july/1561989600/alex-mckinnon/blackbirds-australia-s-hidden-slave-trade-history.
[10] Wilkes, Sue. Regency Spies: Secret Histories of Britain's Rebels & Revolutionaries . Pen and Sword. Kindle Edition. Location 1014.
[11] Theobald Wolfe Tone, The Writings of Theobald Wolfe Tone 1763-98, Volume 3: France, the Rhine, Lough Swilly and death of Tone, Janurary 1797 to November 1798, Eds. T.W. Moody, R.B. McDowell and C.J. Woods, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 2007, p516.
[12] I have mixed with Australian Aborigines from most parts of Australia and can tell you that those I got to know well have expressed strong resentment of mass immigration (black or white), for obvious reasons. Yet, again, the newsmedia conflates mass immigration with multiculturalism and creates the impression that Australian Aborigines have nothing to say against being made an ever smaller part of Australia's demography and land-tenure. This is particularly evident with the Australian ABC. It was demonstrated in the Q&A ABC program of 9 July 2018 on Immigration which included the Indigenous lawyer, Teela Reid. Unusually, The Guardian actually noticed this: ‘Reed, a Wiradjuri and Wailwan woman, appeared to find the whole discussion baffling. “Don’t get me started, the whole bloody country has immigrated or invaded,” she said. “It’s crazy to sit and watch the conversation unfold.” ’ How confusing to be forced to use the rhetoric of multiculturalism as a counter to discrimination against Aborigines, while aware that all these Anglo and multicultural groups are uninvited invaders, not necessarily colonising, but moving relentlessly, and as if by right, onto once-Aboriginal lands and resources.

"People have a right to a say in the character of their street, and their neighbourhood. The principle of subsidiarity, of devolving power to the lowest practical level, is important. It is indeed good for people’s mental health if they have a say, and bad for their mental health if they feel powerless. My Bill does two key things – it requires VCAT to follow properly made Council decisions, and it gives Councils, rather than Ministers, the last word on height controls. Hayes says, "At present VCAT is out of control. Its proper role is to ensure that Councils don’t act in an arbitrary or capricious fashion [...]. But VCAT behaves as a Planning Authority in its own right, telling Councils that although the Council wants a height limit of, say, 4 storeys, they think that 6 storeys would be better! Councils should be able to put in place mandatory height controls at a height acceptable to the community. The high rise buildings being approved by Planning Ministers are not in the best interests of residents, overshadowing them and turning Melbourne into a soulless concrete jungle. Communities should have a say in relation to height limits." (MP Clifford Hayes in speech to Protectors of Public Lands Vic. reproduced here.) (Photos by Jill Quirk)

“Protecting Open Space in 21st Century Melbourne” - Speech to Protectors of Public Lands Saturday 26 October 2019 by Clifford Hayes

Thank you for the invitation to speak with you this afternoon and thank you also for the opportunity to represent you in the Victorian Parliament. I am aware that it is a great honour.

I want to congratulate the Protectors of Public Lands on what you do. Protecting the public domain is very selfless, unselfish work. It is also often thankless and difficult work. They’re not making any more land, but we are making many more people, and the resulting clash over the uses to which land should be put are becoming more acute with every passing year.

And of course the increasing price of land in our suburbs has made open space immensely valuable in dollar terms, leading to landowners including Commonwealth and State Governments looking to sell it off and make a real estate killing. Yet the population growth that drives the escalating land price also makes open space more valuable than ever AS open space – keeping our city and suburbs cool, giving us public places to walk, meet or rest, helping our mental health.

Just a fortnight ago the journalist Noel Towell reported in The Age that the State Labor Government is poised to massively ramp up its sales of publicly owned Crown land around Victoria, with more than 2600 hectares set to go under the hammer.

About 150 sites in Melbourne and country Victoria are listed as on the market for future land sales in a sell off that dwarfs the 533 hectares sold in the past 10 years.

Last week I asked a Question without Notice in the Legislative Council about this Report as follows – “Given the dramatic ongoing decline in open space per capita in Melbourne as a result of population growth of well over 100,000 per annum and the alarming decline in Melbourne’s vegetation cover, will the government investigate offering these parcels to local Councils for a nominal amount subject to an enforceable condition that they are turned into, maintained and retained as public open space?”

I am well aware that people in this room have spent a lot of time trying to stop the State Government selling off public land, often involving Government agencies offering the land to Councils at inflated prices that amount to duress, and a scam, where the public is being expected to pay for land that we already own. The Minister’s reply was polite, but not very encouraging. That is why your work is so important, keeping Governments and their Departments and agencies honest.

I see the clash over using land for public open space, or for other uses – which are often in themselves good and socially beneficial, such as facilities for women’s sport – played out time and time again in my Electorate. I have the good fortune to represent a significant area of beautiful Port Phillip Bay beachfront, and that is an area of great conflict. We have proposals to add a large restaurant to the Brighton Life Saving Club as part of its redevelopment. We have a proposal from a café lessee to take over and develop an area where public toilets are located at North Point. We have proposals to extend the opening hours for a café/restaurant at Ricketts Point.

Each of these proposals can sound reasonable, and many of us like to eat or drink by the beach or foreshore, but their sum total is to kill off the connection with nature that is the very thing that makes the beach attractive in the first place – to kill the goose that lays the golden egg.

Unfortunately – and I think your late Secretary and driving force, Julianne Bell, grasped this with great clarity – there is hardly a blade of grass or grain of sand that isn’t being eyed off by someone who wants to make a dollar out of it or appropriate it for their own benefit. It’s not just in my part of the world – I know of the battle, for example, in historic Footscray Park, where the well connected Melbourne Victory soccer club is seeking to establish a large stadium in parkland close to the Maribrynong River. And of the Warrnambool Racing Club’s appropriation of the beaches between Warrnambool and Port Fairy to train racehorses, to the detriment of other beach users, particularly the endangered Hooded Plover.

Often when land is appropriated and vegetation bulldozed elaborate promises are made about offsets elsewhere. In my experience these undertakings are seldom honoured. For example 10 years ago when a previous State Labor Government expanded Melbourne’s Urban Growth Boundary to allow for massive development in Melbourne’s west it said developers would have to pay a habitat protection levy which would enable the purchase of areas of grassland which would offset the development. 10 years later it has emerged that at the present rate of progress it will take the Victorian Government 100 years to purchase the amount of grassland it promised to protect at the time!

And just last week it introduced a Bill to amend the levy. For starters I am disappointed to read that the Habitat Compensation fee system is being renamed the Environment Mitigation Levy. It is the loss of habitat that is the core issue here, and we should never lose sight of it. I am also troubled to learn that property developers are talking about how well the Government has consulted with them over this Bill, when I don’t think it has been consulting with environment groups at all!

In my first speech to Parliament in February I set out my vision for Melbourne – to make it a great place to live, not merely a great place in population size to rival such places as Shanghai, New York, London, or Sao Paolo. Such greatness would be mere obesity, with all the disadvantages of such.

Not a city or a state where people are crammed into dogbox apartments, living on crowded and congested streets in an environmentally unfriendly concrete heat island, but a spacious city with open skies, open and tree-filled streets, with gardens.

Unfortunately this is not the direction in which Melbourne is headed. Since Australia’s migration programme was turbocharged and effectively trebled some 15 years ago, Melbourne has been growing at a rate of over 100,000 people each year, and is now growing at around 130,000 people each year. This has had numerous adverse impacts on our quality of life – traffic congestion, housing unaffordability, loss of vegetation, wildlife and open space. One of the consequences of Melbourne’s rapid population growth has been an attack on local democracy. Residents have lost their right to a say in the character of their street, their neighbourhood and their community.

Consistent with my election commitments I moved a Private Members Motion in May, aimed at restoring local democracy in planning issues and curbing the power of the Victorian Civil & Administrative Tribunal (VCAT). The Motion called on the Government to give more power to local councils to defend their communities from inappropriate developments.

In particular it called on the Government to amend the Planning & Environment Act so that VCAT was required to give effect to local planning policies, rather than just taking planning schemes into account. It also called on the Minister for Planning to implement mandatory height controls, rather than discretionary height controls, where Councils sought them.

I was delighted that this motion was passed in the Legislative Council with the support of the Liberal opposition and my crossbench colleagues. It is very unusual for a Motion to pass in either House without the Government’s support.

I believe there is a real mood for change in the community to fix a planning scheme which is biased against local residents and skewed in favour of property developers. I am now preparing amendments to the Planning & Environment Act which would give legal effect to the sentiments in my Private Member’s Motion. I believe these amendments would help restore the balance and give local residents a genuine say in planning decisions. I am encouraging residents and community groups to support my campaign for greater local democracy in the Planning & Environment Act.

People have a right to a say in the character of their street, and their neighbourhood. The principle of subsidiarity, of devolving power to the lowest practical level, is important. It is indeed good for people’s mental health if they have a say, and bad for their mental health if they feel powerless.

• The Bill does two key things – it requires VCAT to follow properly made Council decisions, and it gives Councils, rather than Ministers, the last word on height controls.

• At present VCAT is out of control. Its proper role is to ensure that Councils don’t act in an arbitrary or capricious fashion, for example by allowing one person to build four units on their property, and refusing to allow a next door neighbour with the same size property to do the same. But VCAT behaves as a Planning Authority in its own right, telling Councils that although the Council wants a height limit of, say, 4 storeys, they think that 6 storeys would be better!

Councils should be able to put in place mandatory height controls at a height acceptable to the community. The high rise buildings being approved by Planning Ministers are not in the best interests of residents, overshadowing them and turning Melbourne into a soulless concrete jungle. Communities should have a say in relation to height limits.

That said, I am absolutely aware that giving Councils more power is not a silver bullet, and that Councils can and do make poor decisions.

• It is not true that people who oppose high rise are NIMBYs, or that they favour urban sprawl. They don’t want the high rise forced in ANYONE’s backyard. What the State Government needs to examine is the premise that Melbourne has to keep increasing by 130,000 people each year. That’s the issue that people are never given a say about.

• Melbourne’s rapid population growth, combined with enforced urban consolidation, has resulted in a paving over of open space and a loss of vegetation and wildlife, when in times of climate change we need our vegetation, front yards and back yards. Urban consolidation has turned suburbs into heat islands. Population growth has driven traffic congestion and road rage. It has driven housing unaffordability and homelessness, and population growth has driven the construction of high rise buildings which are full of defects and even unsafe.

• Property developers have done well out of this government sponsored building boom of the past 15 years, but ordinary residents have not. Their quality of life has declined, and it will continue to decline unless legislation like this puts power back in the hands of ordinary people.

A study in December 2017 found that high-rise living had adverse impacts on mental health. It found that sharing semi-public spaces with strangers can make residents more suspicious and fearful of crime. Many feel an absence of community, despite living alongside tens or even hundreds of other people.

There is a fear of isolation. During ongoing research into social isolation among older people in the English city of Leeds, residents of high-rise buildings reported feeling lonely and isolated – some were afraid to even open their front doors.

Many advocates of high density living claim that it is better for the environment and climate change than suburban sprawl. Studies have shown this to be not the case. One 3 year US study in 2017 found that living in a high-rise tower in Chicago was much less environmentally sustainable than moving to a house in the suburbs. Apartment dwellers consume more energy, spend more of their time travelling, and use their cars more.

In terms of embodied energy in construction high-rise fared even worse. The project found that high-rise buildings required 49% more embodied energy to construct per square metre, and a stunning 72% more on a per person basis.

As has been noted before, the most energy efficient building is the one that already exists. Unfortunately State Governments have paid way too little attention to this and have made it far too easy to demolish existing houses, even those of heritage significance.

The idea that high density apartments, which require more lighting and air conditioning, are more sustainable than detached houses, which can have solar panels, rainwater tanks, and front yards and back yards with trees, shade and open space, is contradicted by the evidence.

So what needs to change? In my view, it’s not complicated. Two words - local democracy. Give the local residents the power in relation to planning. The Planning and Environment Act 1987 was supposed to establish a framework for planning the use, development and protection of land in Victoria in the present and long-term interests of all Victorians. It is my contention that it has been changed by successive governments so that it does not achieve those objectives.

The bill I will present seeks to do this in two ways. First by directing planning authorities and VCAT to consider and give effect to local planning policies which have been approved by the Government. Secondly by allowing Municipal Councils to set real height limits, including mandatory controls, which cannot be undermined by either State Government or VCAT.

Under my bill the Minister for Planning will be required to accept Council proposals for mandatory height limits, rather than arbitrarily raise the limits or make them discretionary and therefore worthless, as he does at present.

The bill will also make VCAT consider Strategic Planning Policies developed by Councils. What’s more, it will instruct VCAT to give effect to such local planning policies as expressed in the Local Planning Policy Framework.

I encourage your members to contact your local Members of Parliament by phone, email, letter, or in person, to encourage them to vote for the Bill. And on Sunday 10 November, in the week before my Bill gets debated in the Legislative Council, there will be a Rally at the Elsternwick Plaza, next to Elsternwick Station, at 2pm. I encourage you to attend, and bring others!

My bill is a modest proposal that is intended to start the process of giving back planning controls to local communities through their elected councils.

I hope it will not only be a shot in the arm for local democracy and genuine community say, I hope it will act as a brake on rampant habitat destruction. The key driver of habitat destruction is population growth. Sadly environment groups seem to lack the courage to stand up and say this. One honourable exception I came across recently was Jeff Davis, Assistant Director of the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife Habitat at a June 2019 meeting of the Southern Resident Killer Whale Task Force, who said “Population Growth is the Top Challenge for Conserving Habitat”.

He was followed by a Task Force Member G.I. James, who works with the Lummi Nation’s Natural Resources Division, who was prepared to tell a few home truths about the threat to the orcas –

“We’re worried about the population that’s going to be here in the next 25 years and we can’t even address the problems that are being created by the people who are here right now. We think we can have it all. We can have the roads, we can have our cars, we can have our businesses and we can still have those natural resources that depend on the very same things all that destroys”.

Indeed. I thank the Protectors of Public Lands for everything you have done, and are doing, to protect the quality of life in Melbourne from overdevelopment. It is often hard, unrewarding work, but it is very important in maintaining our quality of life, and not allowing it to quietly slip away.

I hope you can join my fight for a better, not bigger, Australia, and I and my office are always ready to assist you in any way we can.

Clifford Hayes, MLC,
Sustainable Australia Party
Southern Metropolitan Region.

Direct: (03) 9530 8399 | 0458 750 700
Business Address: 206 Bay Street, Brighton

In the Australian Federal elections to be held on 18 May, the choice of candidates should include candidates who are resolved, should they win, to do their utmost to rectify the serious threats to the very survival of Australia and the rest of humanity. The most critical of these threats is the threat of nuclear war. Regardless of who is held to be most at fault - Russia, China or the United States - any parliamentarian, worthy of holding office, would use his/her influence to try to remove this threat. Neither the Liberal/National government nor the Labor 'opposition' are doing so, nor, as far as we can tell, are the Greens, One Nation nor any other sitting member of Parliament.

They have also failed to address other threats to our global life support system, most typified by the destruction of more than 3.6 million hectares of pristine tropical forests in 2018 as reported in The Guardian on 25 April (3.6 million hectares is roughly equal to a square with a side of length 190km). In addition, there is the destruction and degradation of other wilderness areas and farmland, ever larger quantities of pollution and the high consumption of non-renewable resources. A candidate seeking to rectify all of these problems would, if elected, act to eliminate their principle causes - neo-liberal 'free market' economics and population growth.

We believe that such a candidate would support the policies listed below. We intend to ask each candidate standing for each House of Representatives seat and for each of the 12 Senate seats for each state, whether he/she supports, or is opposed to, each of the policies. Our first priority will be to ask this of independent candidates and candidates of parties other than those listed above. Their responses or lack thereof will be posted here on CanDoBetter.

Please feel encouraged to ask each candidate seeking your vote will he/she try to implement such policies if elected and post any responses below.

There are 56 policies in all. They are divided into the sections: Effective government participation in the economy, Sustainability, Basic needs: Full employment in secure and fulfilling occupations, Education, Basic needs: other, Democracy, Transparency and Accountability, ForeignPolicy: Syria, Foreign policy - Palestine/Israel, Foreign policy - Other Middle East, Foreign policy: Ukraine and Russia and Human rights: Protection of human rights, civil liberties, freedom of speech and proper legal conduct by the authorities.

Effective #governmentParticipation" id="governmentParticipation">government participation in the economy

1. The scrapping of the 1993 National Competition Policy Review Report (a.k.a. the "Hilmer Report") (pdf here) and its neo-liberal economic prescriptions of privatisation and deregulation.

2. #governmentOwnedEnterprises" id="governmentOwnedEnterprises">Government owned enterprises: Seek to establish government owned enterprises in all significant sectors of the economy where they don't already exist: insurance, banking, real estate, funeral services, car retail, car hire, passenger airlines, buses, rail, sea, road and air freight, mining, tourism, supermarkets, and other retail outlets, etc.

3. #rebuildManufacturing" id="rebuildManufacturing">Rebuild manufacturing: Re-build a large Australian manufacturing sector through (1) the establishment of government-owned manufacturing enterprises and (2) tariffs to protect private manufacturing companies from unfair overseas competition;

4. #sovereignControlOfWealth" id="sovereignControlOfWealth">Sovereign control of Australia's wealth: Outlaw the sale of Australian land, natural resources and built resources to non-citizens. Long-term leases to foreign corporations also to be forbidden.

5. #endPrivatisation" id="endPrivatisation">Public audit of previous privatisations:All privatisations, particularly those which have occurred since 1983, to be publicly audited. Privatisations to be audited include Telstra (formerly Telecom), Medibank Private, the Commonwealth Bank and state banks, public transport, insurance, the Port of Melbourne, electricity and water. Members of the public and interested groups be invited to make submissions. Establish the costs to the community of these privatisations of these privatisation as opposed to the benefits;

6. #endCorporatisation" id="endCorporatisation">End corporatisation of government enterprises and reverse existing corporatisations: Corporatisation is generally understood to be the first step towards outright privatisation. One past corporatisation is that of Australia Post. Australia Post could be made to resume its past charter which required it to provide training, career structure, job security, decent wages to employees, good service to the public and not just to achieve the maximum financial profit. Where applicable, the charter of government-owned services and infrastructure should also include protection of the environment.

7. #publicInquiryInto5g" id="publicInquiryInto5g">Public inquiry into the health effects of 5G Wi-Fi networks Many scientists have warned that electromagnetic transmissions in the projected Australia-wide 5G network which are which is 100 times faster than the current 4G network may pose significant health risks. Introduction of 5G Wi-Fi trransmission must be halted until we are sure that it won't adversely affect our health. If it is shown that 5G is harmful, then it should be scrapped and fibre-optic cable used instead (or satellite transmission where fibre-optic networks can't be laid).

7. #broadbandInternetAccess" id="broadbandInternetAccess">Access to broadband Internet to be made a right for every Australian citizen: In all urban regions every residence should have access to fibre-optic cable. In remote communities, access could be through satellite communication.

8. #freeSocialnetworks" id="freeSocialnetworks">Free Internet social networks: The government seek to establish alternatives to Facebook, Google, Twitter and YouTube. These social networks are to respect the privacy of their users and be transparently administered. Rather than being funded by advertising, these services should be funded by general revenue. (Given that YouTube offers to remove advertising for an annual fee, it surely stands to reason that many Australia Internet users would be prepared to pay through the taxation system to be free of advertising.)

9. #openSource" id="openSource">Open-source software: Promote the use of free open-source software by (1) requiring all government and statutory authorities to use the open-source Linux operating system and open-source applications such as the Libre Office suite in place of the Microsoft Office Suite and (2) Establish a public fund to adequately remunerate Australian producers of open-source intellectual property including software.

10. #smallBusinessPremises" id="smallBusinessPremises">Premises for small business: Acquire or build suitable premises for use by retailers, food producers and other small businesses. Rents and charges should be affordable and not a barrier to capable people being able to set up their own businesses;

#sustainability">Sustainability

11. #reduceMigration" id="reduceMigration">Reduce migration: Reduce Australia's net migration to zero. Net migration should remain at zero at least until such time as we can know that no other native Australian animal is threatened with extinction because of the loss of its habitat to accommodate newcomers. [1] Require the Victorian government to dismantle the "Live in Victoria" web-site as immigration is a federal, and not state, responsibility. See #foreignPolicy">Foreign Policy on refugees;

12. #stopClearingNativeForests" id="stopClearingNativeForests">Stop the clearing of native forests: Whether for throw-away paper products or building products, the logging of native forests be outlawed. Only timber from plantations can be used;

13. #stopKillingNativeWildlife" id="stopKillingNativeWildlife">Stop the killing of native wildlife: Outlaw the killing of native Australian wildlife. Re-build destroyed forests and grasslands and repopulate them with the native species which previously lived in those regions or else similar species where those species are extinct;

14. #reusableBevarageContainers" id="reusableBevarageContainers">Reusable beverage containers: require that all beverages be stored in standardised reusable beverage containers for which refunds are to be paid. [2] Refunds for the smallest beverage containers should be no less than 50c. Refunds for larger beverage containers should be more. Outlaw the use of throw-away drink cans;

15. #recycleOrganicwaste" id="recycleOrganicwaste">Recycle organic waste: Organic waste to be recycled as garden compost or in larger specially built organic waste recycling sites. If organic waste is to be collected it must be sent to those organic waste recycling sites possibly in conjunction with recyclable green waste;

16. #eliminateWastefulPackaging" id="eliminateWastefulPackaging">Eliminate wasteful packaging: Impose a tax on the volume of any packaged goods to provide an incentive to eliminate wasteful packaging that adds to the quantity of landfill at garbage tips. (Note, this, in conjunction with the previous policy could reduce the quantity of garbage and (supposedly) recyclable waste to close to zero.

17. #compostingToilets" id="compostingToilets">Composting Toilets: Composting toilets to replace toilets requiring sewerage outfall. Government to create incentives for the use of composting toilets in preference to toilets with sewer outage. Ultimately sewerage systems to be decommissioned.

18. #stopBuiltInObsolescence" id="stopBuiltInObsolescence">Stop built-in obsolescence: Outlaw the deliberate manufacture of artifacts to break, wear down prematurely or to fail due to lack of spare parts and outlaw the importation of such artifacts. Where planned obsolescence can be proven it should be taken by our law enforcement as proof of a criminal conspiracy to defraud members of the public;

19. #localProductionAndConsumption" id="localProductionAndConsumption">Local production and consumption: Encourage the local production and consumption of all food and artifacts. Reduce the need for importation from overseas and transport over long distances;

20. #communityFoodGardens" id="communityFoodGardens">Community Food Gardens:Facilitate the establishment of community fruit and vegetable gardens. Produce from such gardens could be exchanged or sold at local markets(see next point);

21. #communityMarkets" id="communityMarkets">Community Markets:Facilitate the establishment of local markets on common land where anyone can, for a small charge, set up a stall to sell or exchange fruit, vegetables, other prepared food and artifacts;

22. #relocalisation" id="relocalisation">Relocalisation: Work premises for the public service or government statutory authorities to be relocated close to where people live. Private sector to be encouraged to do the same. Over time this will reduce the need for cars, public transport and roads and should allow most to cycle or walk to work;

Providing for #basicNeeds" id="basicNeeds">Basic Needs

Basic needs: #fullEmployment" id="fullEmployment">Full employment in secure and fulfilling occupations

23. #jobGuarantee" id="jobGuarantee">Job guarantee: Federal government guarantee a job to everyone not employed by the private sector, local or state governments.

24. #fullEmploymentAndEquity" id="fullEmploymentAndEquity">Full employment and equity: Implement "Creating effective local labour markets: a new framework for regional employment policy" (2008 2.4 Mb pdf file - download from somewhere on the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (known as CofFEE) - will advise when the new location of the pdf file is known);

25. #onTheJobTraining" id="onTheJobTraining">On-the-job training, career progression: re-establish on-the-job training and career progression in all government departments and statutory authorities as an alternative to training at TAFE colleges and tertiary institutions; Encourage private enterprises to do the same;

26. #reducedWorkingHours" id="reducedWorkingHours">Reduced working hours: Immediate reduction of the working week to 35 hours - to be worked over 9 days per fortnight where it suits the employee. Given the repeated claims of Australia's increased economic efficiency since 1983, the economy should easily be able to manage if working hours were reduced to 35 hours per week, just for a start. Outlaw compulsory overtime. Require employers to offer workers, who don't need a full wage, to work even fewer hours with greater flexibility in their start and finish times;

27. #closeDownSweatShops" id="closeDownSweatShops">Close down sweat-shops: Governments must proactively act to close down factories, which use low-paid workers working for long hours. Re-introduce the state award system;

28. #commonwealthEmploymentService" id="commonwealthEmploymentService">Commonwealth Employment Service: re-establish the Commonwealth Employment Service (CES), which was dismantled in 1998 by the Howard Government. The plethora of private job agencies which replaced the CES has not been nearly as effective in helping job-seekers to find full, part-time or temporary employment;

29. #endSection457visas" id="endSection457visas">Train Australians in needed skills: Only allow employers to employ foreign skilled workers with Temporary Skill Shortage (TSS) visas (previously Section 457 visas) where it can be shown that no worker in Australian worker can fill the vacancy.

25. #endSection457visas" id="endSection457visas">End Section 457 visas: Only allow employers to employ skilled workers where it can be shown that no worker in Australia can fill the vacancy. (Were the #commonwealthEmploymentService">Commonwealth Employment Service reconstituted - see 28 - it would become much easier to fill vacancies from within Australia);

Basic Needs: #education" id="education">Education

26. #stopEducationFundingCuts" id="stopEducationFundingCuts">Stop education funding cuts: Reverse the funding cuts to tertiary institutions and TAFE colleges;

27. #abolishUniversityFees" id="abolishUniversityFees">Abolish university fees: Make tertiary education again free as it is in Argentina, Brazil, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Norway, Slovenia, Sweden and Syria;

28. #provideForStudentsLivingNeeds" id="provideForStudentsLivingNeeds">Provide for students' living needs: Re-establish the Whitlam Government's Tertiary Education Assistance Scheme (TEAS) so that University students don't have to work to support themselves;

29. #strongerTertiaryArtsFaculties" id="strongerTertiaryArtsFaculties">Stronger Tertiary Arts Faculties: More funding for university arts faculties. Provide more careers in the federal public service for Arts graduates. Encourage the private sector, NGOs and states to do the same;

Basic needs: #basicneedsOther" id="basicNeedsOther">Other

30. #housing" id="housing">Housing: Act to ensure that each Australian citizen has secure affordable shelter. Where state housing commissions fail to provide adequate public housing, provide federally funded public housing;

31. #publicLiabilityInsurance" id="publicLiabilityInsurance">Public liability insurance: Establish public liablity insurance as it exists in New Zealand. No-one, who has organised a public event and who has taken all reasonable precautions, should fear financial ruin as a result of any mishap;

#democracy" id="democracy">Democracy, Transparency and Accountability

32. #constituencyMeetings" id="constituencyMeetings">Federal electorate constituency meetings: Each member of the House of Representatives be required to attend meetings of his/her constituents during election campaigns and at regular specified intervals;

33. #fullAccounting" id="fullAccounting">Full accounting of taxation and public expenditure: All losses and gains should be accounted for in the Federal Budget. Losses should include: unutilised skill and experience by the unemployed and under-employed. The budget must give estimates of the value of government services which cannot easily be quantified monetarily;

34. #transparencyWithThePrivateSector" id="transparencyWithThePrivateSector">Transparency with the private sector: Except where national security may be compromised, no 'commercial in-confidence' contract to be signed with any member of the private sector at the initiative of the government. Discriminate in favour of contractors who do not require 'commercial in-confidence' contracts;

35. #allSidesOfStory" id="allSidesOfStory">Publicly owned newsmedia to give all sides of the story: Where facts are disputed in any conflict, whether domestic or international, the charters of the ABC and SBS require that they give both sides of the conflict the opportunity to put their case to the viewing public. (See also #foreignPolicy">Foreign policy);

36. #directDemocracy" id="directDemocracy">Direct Democracy: In the next term of parliament, put to voters a referendum to adopt Direct Democracy as practised in Switzerland;

#foreignPolicy" id="foreignPolicy">Foreign policy

37. #usepublicDiscussionToPreventWar" id="usepublicDiscussionToPreventWar">Use public discussion to prevent war: Invite representatives of foreign governments with which Australia is in conflict to put their case to the Australian public on television in interviews. Where possible, representatives of Australia put Australia's case in interviews on those countries' newsmedia (for example RT and PressTV debate);

Foreign policy: #foreignPolicySyria" id="foreignPolicySyria">Syria

38. #recogniseTheElectedGovernmentOfSyria" id="recogniseTheElectedGovernmentOfSyria">Recognise the elected Government of Syria: Recognise the government of President Bashar al-Assad as the legitimate government of Syria. The Syrian government enjoys far more popular support than the Australian government or any of the Western governments opposed to it, as verified in the June 2014 Presidential election and the Parliamentary elections of April 2016;

39. #endSanctionsAgainstSyria" id="endSanctionsAgainstSyria">End Sanctions against Syria: End sanctions and invite the Syrian government to re-establish its embassy. The sanctions were imposed and the Syrian ambassador was expelled on the absurd fabricated pretext that the Syrian government had massacred its own supporters at Houla in 2013. Pay reparations to Syria for the death and destruction caused by sanctions and terrrorists from Australia;

40. #opposeTheTerroristWarAgainstSyria" id="opposeTheTerroristWarAgainstSyria">Oppose the terrorist war against Syria: Oppose the illegal proxy terrorist war against the people of Syria which began in March 2011. By one estimate, that war has, so far, cost the lives of 400,000 Syrians, including 100,000 members of the Syrian Armed forces by one recent estimate ;

41. #stopAustraliansFromGoingToWarAgainstSyria" id="stopAustraliansFromGoingToWarAgainstSyria">Stop Australians from going to war against Syria: Support Australian Federal Police actions to prevent Australians from going abroad to fight against the Syrian government. Seek collaboration with the Syrian authorities to bring any Australian citizen, known to have participated in that war against the Syrian people, to justice;

42. #compensateSyriaForCareOfIraqiRefugees" id="compensateSyriaForCareOfIraqiRefugees">Compensate the Syrian government for care of Iraqi refugees: Remunerate the Syrian government for the trouble and expense it was put to for having to care for 1,300,000 refugees who fled to Syria as a result of the illegal wars of 1991 and 2003 and sanctions against Iraq in which Australia participated;

Foreign policy: #foreignPolicyPalestineIsrael" id="foreignPolicyPalestineIsrael">Palestine/Israel

43. #peacefulResolutionOfPalestineIsraelConflict" id="peacefulResolutionOfPalestineIsraelConflict">Support peaceful resolution of conflict: Act to bring an end to the Palestine/Israel conflict that will allow all sides to live in peace.

44. #dismantleIsraeliNuclearWeapons" id="dismantleIsraeliNuclearWeapons">Dismantle Israel's nuclear weapons stockpile: The dismantlement of Israel's illegally acquired nuclear weapons be part of the peace settlement;

45. #mordechaiVanunu" id="mordechaiVanunu">Free Mordechai Vanunu: Demand that Israel free former Australian resident Mordechai Vanunu who revealed to the world Israel's illegal possession of nuclear weapons. Offer Mordechai Vanunu asylum in Australia;

46. #endTheftOfPalestinianLand" id="endTheftOfPalestinianLand">End the theft of Palestinian land: Oppose the illegal seizure of land by Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank and the Golan Heights;

Foreign policy: #foreignPolicyOtherMiddleEast" id="foreignPolicyOtherMiddleEast">Other Middle East

47. #opposeInvasionOfYemen" id="opposeInvasionOfYemen">Oppose the invasion of Yemen. Ask that the United Nations take action against the invasion of Yemen by the Saudi Arabian dictatorship. Condemn the supply of weapons, including banned cluster bombs made in the United States, and their use by Saudi Arabia;

Foreign policy: #foreignPolicyUkraineRussia" id="foreignPolicyUkraineRussia">Ukraine and Russia

48. #MH17" id="MH17">MH17: Demand an open public enquiry into destruction of Malay Airlines Flight MH17 in which 28 Australians were amongst the 298 killed on 17 July 2014. Request that the MH17 Black Box given to the Netherlands by East Ukranian rebels, records of communications between Kiev air traffic controllers and MH17 and the United States' government satellite surveillance recordings of flight MH17 be released be made available for that inquiry, as the Russian government has done with its satellite surveillance recordings;

49. #supportDemocracyInUkraine" id="supportDemocracyInUkraine">Support democracy in Ukraine: Support those Ukrainians in Eastern Ukraine who are defending themselves against the regime that was installed in the CIA-orchestrated coup of January 2014;

50. #crimea" id="crimea">Crimea: Recognise the secession of Crimea to Russia from Ukraine in February 2014, which was overwhelmingly supported by the inhabitants of Crimea in a referendum, as a legitimate act of self-determination and self-defence;

51. #venezuela" id="venezuela">Venezuela: Repudiate the appointment by the United States of Juan Guaidó to be 'interim president' of Venezuela in place of the legitimate elected President Nicolas Maduro. Repudiate the recognition of Juan Guaidó by the current Australian government. Oppose United States' aggression against Venezuela, including sanctions and the theft of gold and money belonging to Venezuela;

#humanRights" id="humanRights">Human rights: Protection of human rights, civil liberties, freedom of speech and proper legal conduct by the authorities

52. #asylumToWhistleblowers" id="asylumToWhistleblowers">Asylum to whistleblowers: Request that the United States' government publicly try Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning before a jury for their alleged crimes as requested by them. Should this request be refused, offer political asylum to Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning. Should the United States obstruct Australia's attempts to grant asylum, raise this issue at the United Nations. (Also see #mordechaiVanunu">Free Mordechai Vanunu);

53. #julianAssange" id="julianAssange">Julian Assange: Act to ensure, now that Julian Assange has been arrested by the British authorities on 11 April 2019, after six and a half years illegal detention at the Ecuadorian embassy, facilitated by the UK government, that the UK government uphold all the rights that Julian Assange is guaranteed by British Law;

54. #endDragnetSurveillance" id="endDragnetSurveillance">End surveillance of our phone calls, Internet browsing and e-mail: End the dragnet surveillance of all of our private communications by the United States' CIA and NSA, Britain's GCHQ, MI5 and MI6 and Australia's ASIO and ASIS as revealed by Edward Snowden. As Snowden has revealed, dragnet surveillance has not prevented one act of terrorism. Only allow surveillance of individuals or groups where there is reason to fear terrorism or other illegal acts;

55. #coronialInquestIntoPortArthurMassacre" id="coronialInquestIntoPortArthurMassacre">Port Arthur Massacre: as required by law, conduct a coronial inquest into the murder of 35 Australians at Port Arthur on 28 April 1996 - the largest mass murder in Australia's history. The supposed evidence against Martin Bryant has never been tested in a court of law. All forensic evidence and eyewitness testimony proves Martin Bryant innocent of the crime. The only 'evidence' of Martin Bryant's guilt consists of a supposed confession made after he had been illegally interrogated in solitary confinement for 5 months. Prosecute all those known to have acted unlawfully against Martin Bryant;

56. #martinBryant" id="martinBryant">Martin Bryant: Allow friends and relatives of Martin Bryant to see him in person so that they can verify for themselves the claim by the prison governor that Martin Bryant doesn't want to see anybody;

How you can help

If you agree with most, or all, of these policies, please consider standing as a candidate yourself at he next election if it is not possible for you to stand in this election. If you are a candidate who supports any of the policies listed above or if you know of any such candidate, please let us know so that we can promote that candidate and lift that candidate's profile.

Please feel encouraged to also promote these policies and candidates who support these policies on Twitter, FaceBook, other discussion forums or your own web-site. If you can think of any other policies we should promote, or even if you oppose or don't altogether agree with some of these policies, please also let us know by posting a comment below.

Footnotes

[1] Evidence, that population growth has already exceeded our capacity in some places, can be found in "Crush Hour" about pedestrian congestion in the Melbourne CBD on pages 64-67 of the Apr-May edition of the royalauto printed magazine of the RACV.

[2] Up until the mid-1960s, milk was usually delivered by the milkman in re-usable glass bottles, whilst soft-drink was sold in glass bottles which were refundable. Back then children could supplement their pocket money by collecting soft drink bottles and returning them to the local store for a refund. This ended after a glossy televesion advertising campaign by the Coca Cola corporation that loudly told viewers "Hey, do you know that you can now get Coke in Cans!" Some years later, back in the 1980's I also seem to recall that a proposal was put to the Australian community that all beverages - soft-drinks, alcoholic drinks, jams, other spreads, etc, be sold in refundable containers of standard size and shape so that they could be more easily re-used by different beverage manafucturers and not dumped into landfill. Unfortunately, the proposal was not adopted as government policy.

[3] Policy was previously: 53. Julian Assange: Send a contingent of Federal Police to fly to London, go to the Ecuadorian embassy and escort Julian Assange back to Heathrow Airport and thence back to Melbourne Airport. What British government authority would dare obstruct Australian Federal Police who are clearly acting to uphold the law and to end such a cruel denial of basic human rights?;

On Friday 5 April 2019, as revealed by John Pilger on Twitter from a high level source within the Ecuadorian Government, Julian Assange would shortly be expelled from the London Ecuadorian Embassy. Once evicted, he stands to be arrested by the UK police, extradited to the United States where he faces a secret trial based on a secret indictment. He may face many years behind bars - even the death penalty can't be excluded - all for just publishing, through Wikleaks, facts about world events that the public would be entitled to know in a fair and just world.

In 2010 then Prime Minister Julia Gillard, before Julian Assange was forced to seek asylum in the Ecuadorian Embassy in October 2012, had ordered the Australian Federal Police to investigate Assange in the hope that they would find he had committed a crime. They found none.

In February 2016, the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD) stated that his detention was unlawful. This was reaffirmed by the Working Group in November 2015

An Australian government - if it was committed to the rule of law, free speech, human rights and democracy - could could act now to end the British government's illegal detention of Julian Assange in a matter of hours. It could send to London a contingent of Federal Police to escort Julian Assange out of the Ecuadorian Embassy back to Heathrow Airport and thence to Tullamarine Airport in Melbourne.

Were the British government to dare attempt to interfere with Australian Federal Police escorting Julian Assange back to Australia, the outcry would be enormous - from within Britain, Australia and the rest of the world.

However, not one Australian government, that of Prime Minister Julia Gillard, nor any of the subsequent governments- those of Prime Ministers Kevin Rudd, Tony Abbott, Malcolm Turnbull have enacted this basic duty of care towards Julian Assange. They have not even shown any sympathy for him, or interest.

Not one of the political parties with representation in parliament - The Liberals, the Nationals, Labor, the Greens, nor any of the Independent members have spoken up for Julian Assange. This seems an appalling failure of our parliamentary system and those members of Parliament who supposedly represent us. (One exception to this is the now demonised One Nation Party.)

What You Can Do

Give your first preference to candidates who promise to act for Julian Assange. With a federal election looming, it should now be possible to hold to account those elected members of Parliament who have behaved so shamefully towards Julian Assange. Where you are asked to vote for a sitting candidate from one of the major parties, ask him/her should vote for a candidate who has been silent - or worse - about Julian Assange. Where any other candidate asks for your vote ask him/her what he she intends to do for Julian Assange. Give your first and subsequent references to those who give the best responses and put the major parties last.

Attend protests for Julian Assange.

Post comments in support of Julian Assange on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

Write articles in support of Julian Assange on any web-site on which you have an account.

See also: Be Ready To Act: WikiLeaks Source Says They’re Coming For Assange (5/4/19) by Caitlin Johnstone, The Gestapo Is Coming for Julian Assange (4/4/19) by Paul Craig Roberts.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) has released visitor arrivals and departures data for the month of January, which posted record annual permanent and long-term arrivals.

In the year to January 2019, there were 835,310 permanent and long-term arrivals into Australia – up 6% from January 2018 and an all-time high. This was partly offset by 546,310 permanent and long-term departures from Australia:

Put together, there were 289,000 net permanent and long-term arrivals into Australia in the year to January 2019, way above the 42-year average of 154,249:

While the ABS is at pains to state that “permanent and long-term movements… are not an appropriate source of migration statistics”, since they relate to the intention of passengers arriving, not actual outcomes (measured using the 12/16 rule), there is a strong correlation between this series and the ABS’ official quarterly net overseas migration (NOM) estimates:

Given the strong rise in net permanent and long-term arrivals over the second half of 2018, there’s a strong likelihood that ABS’ NOM estimate for September 2018 will jump when it is released on Thursday.

Ex Labor leader, Mark Latham, recently joined Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party and will be running for the NSW legislative council at the next state election. Here is his 8-Point Plan to "save Sydney “suffocating” from overpopulation and overdevelopment."

Latham's 8-Point Plan

1. Our immigration program must be framed in the interest of the people who live here now. This is especially true of policies impacting on an over-crowded, increasingly dysfunctional city like Sydney.

2. Permanent immigration numbers should be slashed, bringing them closer to their 20th Century average of 70,000 per annum (down from 190,000 currently). Temporary visas must also be cut back.

3. NSW should not take any more special refugee intakes, given the mismanagement of Syrian refugee settlement by the Baird Government.

4. Sydney’s planning laws must be overhauled to make the city more efficient and sustainable. An urban containment strategy is needed. For existing suburbs, One Nation supports development and density restrictions in under-serviced, over-crowded LGAs. The Government should publish a comprehensive report identifying these suburbs (most likely, most of the city).

5. The release of greenfields residential land also needs to be limited to prevent further urban sprawl. Priority should be given to the development of employment land in Sydney to reduce commuter-travelling times, especially in the city’s outer suburbs.

6. The Greater Sydney Commission should be disbanded (at an annual cost saving of $18 million) as it has become a mouthpiece for Big Australia immigration and unlimited population growth in Sydney. Political appointments and unrealistic planning strategies have dominated the Commission’s work.

7. The Greater Sydney Commission’s excessive housing and population growth targets should also be abandoned. NSW Planning should be given the task of containing the city’s growth to reasonable lifestyle, infrastructure and environmental limits. Local Councils, as the level of government closest to the people, also have a critical role to play in limiting densities and development in line with local infrastructure/service capacity. One Nation respects this vital local government urban planning role.

8. The State Government should scale back the responsibilities of the so-called Western Sydney Aerotropolis to focus on employment creation in the immediate vicinity of the new Badgerys Creek Airport, rather than land acquisition and development for residential purposes. In the fair treatment of existing property rights, affected landowners should be bought out at enhanced (rezoned) land values, rather than current unimproved rates.

Australia’s annual permanent migrant intake has fallen to its lowest level in more than a decade after a Federal Government crackdown on dodgy claims. Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton said the government had restored integrity to the migration program to make sure the “best possible” migrants were brought into the country through tougher vetting. William Burke from the Sustainable Australia Party spoke to Tim McMillan about the new figures.

Should Australia’s migrant intake increase or decrease?

Australia’s annual permanent migrant intake has fallen to its lowest level in more than a decade after a Federal Government crackdown on dodgy claims.

Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton said the government had restored integrity to the migration program to make sure the “best possible” migrants were brought into the country through tougher vetting.

William Burke from Sustainable Australia spoke to Tim McMillan about the new figures.

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(Article by Sally Pepper.) On New Year's Day, January 1st 2018, as I surfaced around 10.00 a.m, I heard on the news that power prices and tolls on roads around Melbourne will both increase and, that this year many Victorians will experience additional economic hardship. My immediate defensive thought was, "Well I don't use tollroads and I guess I can be more frugal with my use of gas and electricity."

But on reflection, this is, in a way, beside the point. Such thinking does not ward off forever the effects of these increases. Many people rely on toll roads to get to work each day. The fact that I don't use them only puts me at a slight advantage to those who need to use them. It is not in any way to my benefit though that other people are being disadvantaged in their daily struggle to feed their families and pay the mortgage. It is also beside the point as these increases are,unfortunately, only part of a progression. Tolls will go on increasing, as will power prices. Beside this, there will be more toll roads until I won't be able to avoid them. I also will be caught in their web. I can delay the impact but I can't avoid it.

Where are we headed? Not only I will be caught but so will many others who hitherto have felt untouched by the imposed hardships on those less fortunate. There will be a cascade of those affected. The tentacles of the owners of toll roads and power companies will eventually have most of us in their grip. After all, this is all about maintaining that ratio of the 1% as opposed to the 99% . Remember the "Occupy Movement"?

Precipice complacency

Many people I know count themselves lucky, comparing themselves with those who are not as well off. They do not see themselves as affected by the rising inequality in Australia. This "glass half full" attitude is so much more socially approved of than mine, which compares my lot with both what it used to be and also what it could have been were it not for the 1%. To me "glass half full" attitude is a sort of misplaced Pollianna-ism and given what I believe from the trend I observe it is really a sort of "precipice complacency."

It seems that all will be taken from those who don't own the means to extract from the majority. Those about to lose are those who now feel secure, even somewhat wealthy: those with superannuation, who have finally paid off their houses and look forward to a carefree retirement. Neither will things get easier for their overworked adult children, in turn trying give their children the best start they can in life. They all appear unaware, unsuspecting, that things will be taken from them by the system that once gave to them. In one lifetime - theirs - the "accumulation phase" will be over and the outgoings will be larger than the income. Most of us will be financially and time stressed. Our children will be hungry for work. Or just hungry.

Our society is as a collection of frogs being slowly warmed to boiling point by a few big frogs who've got control of the frypan. We had better take the pan off them before the bubbles start to rise.

Chief of Staff to former Prime Minister Tony Abbott, Peta Credlin, is the latest to question Australia’s mass immigration program, which flooded NSW (read Sydney) and VIC (read Melbourne) with a record 185,500 net overseas migrants (combined) in the year to June, further crush-loading our two biggest cities. This article was first published on Macrobusiness at https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2017/12/peta-credlin-give-us-national-debate-vote-australias-population/ on December 15 2017.

By Leith van Onselen

Chief of Staff to former Prime Minister Tony Abbott, Peta Credlin, is the latest to question Australia’s mass immigration program, which flooded NSW (read Sydney) and VIC (read Melbourne) with a record 185,500 net overseas migrants (combined) in the year to June, further crush-loading our two biggest cities:

Last night, Ms Credlin delivered a detailed monologue on Sky News calling for immigration levels to be normalised back to their historical average, as well as demanding that our federal politicians give Australians a national debate and vote on Australia’s future population size.

While the whole video is well worth watching, here’s a few key quotes:

Overcrowded streets, busy roads, nowhere to park, over development, unaffordable housing, cramped schools, and in the words of many locals, far too many highrises. These were the concerns raised today [in Bennelong], and they are all code for population growth…

What I can say with absolute certainty is that we didn’t come along any ‘Big Australia’ advocates in Bennelong today…

Having spent 16 years on campaign trails, like today, I wasn’t surprised. Population is often raised because the majority of Australians live in the capital cities, and the congestion and development issues that come with population growth are a big concern…

Should we keep taking immigrants?’ is not the question.

Instead it’s ‘how many immigrants should we take?

What’s the optimum population size for Australia?

I know I speak for many people when I say this is the conversation they want to see their leaders having, the nation having, rather than being shouted down as racists or worse…

Isn’t it about time we had a national conversation about how big we want our population in the future and put in place immigration levels to deliver it, rather than pretending this issue doesn’t exist?..

We need to take a pause in Australia’s immigration intake so that we can settle those here now into affordable housing and secure jobs, and let the infrastructure that is being built catch-up.

Well said. It’s important to note at this time that net overseas migration (NOM) into Australia was 245,500 in the year to June 2017, which is more than triple the historical average of 73,000 NOM since Federation:

Clearly, immigration levels need to be drastically reduced, starting with Australia’s permanent migrant program, which is running at 2.5 times turn-of-the century levels and is even higher than at the peak of the mining boom:

There is no economic or social rationale for such high immigration levels, especially given the overwhelming majority of migrants are flooding our two biggest and most crowded cities, and more than 90% are non-humanitarian (hence we are stripping developing nations of their ‘skilled’ human resources).

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Public Seminar with two speakers: Jack Roach, immediate past president of Boroondara Residents Action Group and Adrian Whitehead. Adrian Whitehead will speak on "Population Perspectives, from global to local." Public Welcome. Free Parking near venue. Financial members may nominate for any committee positions. See details inside re how to nominate.

Sustainable Population Australia (Victorian and Tasmanian branch)
Annual General Meeting
Saturday November 25th 2017 at 2.00pm
Hawthorn Library meeting rooms 3-4, 584 Glenferrie Rd, Hawthorn VIC 3122
Nominations for Committee Positions: Financial members of SPA may nominate for any committee positions. Please email before 17thth November to [email protected] or write to:

Returning Officer, Sustainable Population Australia, Victorian and Tasmanian branch,
P.O.BOX 556 Hawthorn 3122

Following the formal proceedings, please stay for our public seminar
Population perspectives: from global to local
Image result for globeExcavation for tower circular
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Presenters: Adrian Whitehead, Environmental campaigner &
Jack Roach: Immediate Past President Boroondara Residents’ Action Group
Free parking is available near the venue.
You are invited to stay for afternoon tea following the seminar

In November 2016 I co-wrote an article for New Matilda exploring why it is important for those on the left to discuss population sustainability. Although the feedback was overwhelmingly positive, it was suggested that the debate is invalid unless it is inclusive of migrants or indigenous Australians. Which got me thinking …

The literature of what our indigenous communities think is currently very scarce. Thankfully, there has been a recent opportunity for me to discuss with an indigenous representative in Canberra to interview on this very topic.

Richie Allan and Violet Sheridan

Richie Allan is involved in cultural awareness training and cultural tours and is concerned about over-development around Canberra and the repercussions of ongoing growth. These are concerns shared by his community. Richie’s mother, Violet Sheridan (also a director of Traditional Owners), ran as a candidate for Sustainable Australia in the 2016 elections.
When I met with him, this is what Richie had to say about population sustainability.
Q: Richie, what can you tell me about your community and yourself, including the main issues that are important to your community and that you are passionate about?

‘My community, the Ngunnawal people, are very concerned about over-development on our sacred lands. For example, the Ginninderra Falls is a very important site to my people where important business and initiation ceremonies are held. We want our future generations to be able to experience this tradition in nature and not in outer suburban development.’

Richie explained that there are so many rich and varied sacred sites, places of significance, song lines and stories, just in the ACT alone.

How can you speak of ‘diversity’ when you don’t know whose country you are in?

‘So many of these are unknown and invisible to non-indigenous people. Why is it that people speak of diversity through growth and development when they don’t even know whose country they are on or even how to say “hello” in our native tongue? We can’t maintain our links to our cultural heritage with all these houses and development projects going up.’

Richie also shared that it is hard for Indigenous groups to have an impact because much of the federal funding for indigenous affairs is lost to bureaucracy with only a small proportion ending up with grassroots groups.

Why run for the Sustainable Australia Party?

Q: Can you tell me how Violet decided to run for Sustainable Australia [political party] and why does she connect strongly with a political party that has a strong focus on population issues?

‘The smaller size of Canberra has a more inherent sense of community and therefore [it] was easier for two people from different communities, campaigning for similar issues, to find each other. Smaller spaces have a greater sense of community that may be lost in larger centres such as Sydney or Melbourne.’

Richie met Martin Tye (the Sustainable Australia candidate in the previous ACT election) through social media, and since then the two have regularly met up. They connected by finding lots of common ground in regards to environmental and developmental concerns. Richie was invited to participate in the last ACT election, but he found he did not have time to run as a candidate. Violet shared Richie’s concerns and ran in the 2016 ACT election.

Australia’s population growth killing indigenous culture and heritage

Q: In regards to population growth in the ACT, why is this particular issue a concern for you as an indigenous activist?

‘Rapid population growth is killing indigenous culture and heritage in the ACT.’

Richie shared his frustration that the indigenous community is not consulted adequately about town planning and development processes. For example, while the planning authorities claim that they have indigenous consultants in the planning processes, they often select individuals who tell the government and developers what they want to hear. Richie strongly believes that the communities, whose lands are impacted, are not consulted at the grassroots level and that they do not hear about planning proposals until it is too late.

Queries skilled immigration when indigenous talent under-utilised

Q: What is your knowledge of Australia’s population policies more broadly and how do you and your community feel about these? Is this a concern that resonates with indigenous communities across Australia?

‘It does not make sense to have a large skilled migration program when there are enough skilled people already here.’

Richie believes that there is a very considerable under-utilisation of indigenous talent and skills, especially considering the high levels of unemployment among indigenous communities. Too often, non-indigenous people are employed in indigenous programs. Richie stresses that

‘it is not about stopping migration, just slowing it down so that everyone in the community benefits better.’

He made it clear that a generous humanitarian program is still essential, although cautioned that ‘refugees are struggling to afford to live in the city, as it is too expensive, but there are no jobs or livelihoods out in the bush.’

Indigenous culture conflicts with growth for growth’s sake policies

Q: How do you think national population policies might differ if indigenous communities were consulted and these consultations were successfully implemented?
Richie is pessimistic about more indigenous people being represented in government,

‘as it would not be considered by the main powers economically viable for treaties to be recognised and for the indigenous way of life to become mainstream.’

Richie does believe that although there is a diversity of opinions among indigenous peoples, that there would be less development and “growth for growth’s sake” if Indigenous people were more represented in parliament or policy-making decisions.

Ideology prevents the left from finding common ground with indigenous

Q: Many of the left believe in open-border policies while also being active in supporting Aboriginal people’s rights to their culture and land. Do you think these two aspirations can be balanced or reconciled?

‘People on the left can be stuck on their own agendas. It is only when people are able to put their own agendas aside and reach out to everyone that we can finally get things done. At the moment identity is more important to people than reaching out and finding common ground.’

As an example of this disconnect, Richie reflected that there was a lack of political presence during the Invasion Day protests in the ACT, even [among] the left-leaning politicians.
Richie also explored the idea that in modern Australian society there is personal identity but collective culture has been lost to greed and money.

Working collaboratively with indigenous community

Q: Do you have any advice on how groups advocating for sustainable population in Australia might work collaboratively with indigenous community activists?

‘Find a balance between the aims of the group and the objectives of the indigenous people you are working with. It is very important to bring elders into the conversation and work collaboratively so people don’t feel they are being used or being talked down to.’

Something’s going to have to give

Q: Any take-home words for environmentalists and left-leaning activists?

‘Population growth is killing people. My son and daughter-in-law have to live with me because they can’t afford their own home. At this rate of growth, it is impossible to plan properly. If we keep going at the rate we’re going, all the other issues, such as crime, will also jump. We can’t sustain this for much longer, something’s going to have to give.’

Final Thoughts

In interviewing Richie, I was personally taken by his insight into the relationship between his community with their local geographic area. What may have appeared to many of us as another group of trees, a gently undulating hill or another patch of cleared land for yet another Canberra suburb may very well be a place of deep cultural or spiritual significance. I was also touched by how many similar areas of opinion he and I shared, particularly concerns regarding town planning and economic growth at all-cost.
I would certainly not try to lay claim to the fact that Richie’s interview is totally indicative of what all indigenous people think in regards to population. Like the rest of us, I am very certain one would find a diversity of opinions depending on the individuals spoke to. However, his views have similarities to Nola Turner-Jensen, Wirandjuri Australian, director of CultuRecode, and member of Sustainable Population Australia. She says the following:

Time to bring the invisible people in

“To add the perspective of Aboriginal Australians in an article about the Australian population, captures the paradoxical situation of Indigenous people in this country. On the one hand, they are excluded from the policies and institutions who decide on such issues. They have been herded to the fringe of society and the economy, with a huge bank of knowledge on Ancient Australia, sitting invisible to most. On the other hand, the world is looking for sustainable solutions and we are starting to realise that constant progress, individualism and material accumulation is not creating a healthy future for Australia’s children or environments. For 50,000 years this country’s Ancient custodians lived everyday according to what was best for every single one of Australia’s living landscapes and people. As experts in creating local sustainable and harmonious societies, Indigenous people and their knowledge wait for the chance to contribute to looking after Australia again. This time in a shared custodianship. It is time to bring the invisible in, and share the spotlight together, before it is all too late. “

This also reflects with what can be found in the literature. For example, from the concluding comment of the Aboriginal Deaths in Custody Watch Committee (1994):

“Ecologically our land is on its knees: with help it can survive and resuscitate itself, but with any major increase in population this land will die, and we will die with it.”

I would certainly encourage further discussions and collaboration with indigenous communities on this very important issue.
Michael Bayliss is President of the Victoria and Tasmanian Branch of Sustainable Population Australia. He would like to thank Richie Allan from Traditional Owners Aboriginal Corporation and Martin Tye from Sustainable Australia for making this article possible.