overpopulation

This article forms the basis of a brochure, attached for download and printing, prepared by Roland Johnson for the Victorian and Tasmanian Branch of Sustainable Population Australia.

‘The modern plague of over population is soluble by means we have discovered and with resources we possess. What is lacking is …universal consciousness of the gravity of the problem and the education of the billions of people who are its victims’. [1]
Photo: Martin Luther King, 1966 (revered symbol of human rights)

But powerful forces have opposed population control and the world’s population has more than doubled since 1966 to seven billion, with three billion desperately poor. Migration to rich countries is not a solution. Watch Roy Beck’s YouTube video , ‘World Poverty, Immigration and Gumballs’, to see why.

In the screenshot below, one gumball equals one million people; the tall jars represent the three billion poor. The wine glass holds five years’ migrant intake at one million a year (the current intake of the United States). Even if Australia took one million people a year (nearly four times our current intake) the numbers of the poor would continue to grow at around the rate of 80 million each year. [2] Besides, Australia’s immigrants are more middle class than poor.

Poor people desperately need help where they are, including with family planning. We must stabilise our numbers, both nationally and globally. Currently the world is finding it difficult to feed all of the seven billion already here. [4] It won’t get easier if the global population grows to 9.75 billion or more by 2050. [5]

AUSTRALIA

From 2007-13 Australia’s net migration averaged over 230,000 p.a. which, added to an average annual natural increase of 157,000 p.a, meant growth of 387,000 p.a. and an annual growth rate of 1.8 per cent. [6] This is among the highest in the world. [7] It is destroying Australia’s ability to help the world’s poor and this growth will take us from 24 to 64 million in 2100. [8] It must stop some time.

WHY NOT NOW?

A sustainable Australian population

Australia’s total fertility rate (TFR) is around 1.9 per woman, [9] technically below replacement— 2.1. But the population is still youthful. So we would keep growing due to natural increase until 2046, leveling off at 26 million. A policy to stabilise our population closer to 26 million rather than 64 million is needed.

The growth lobby of big business, developers and media moguls is forcing Australia’s growth to be among the fastest in the world. Our total increase of 387,000 a year is more than the population of Canberra (381,488 in 2013). [11] This growth is against the wishes of 70 per cent of voters. [12] Our 1.8 per cent p.a. exceeds Canada’s high 1.2 per cent & NZ’s 0.8 per cent. [13]

The Immigration Department is overloaded

Immigration Department files reveal “…enforcement capacity has collapsed…nine in ten skilled migrant visas may be fraudulent …[investigation into] a Somali people - smuggling cell linked to a terror suspect … ceased due to a lack of resources’. [14]

Two thirds of new arrivals are on some kind of working visas, which are issued by licensed agents subject to rorting and bribes. Many visa holders, through a well understood system of visa churning, eventually gain permanent residency. [15]

Immigration policy can be changed. Around 80,000 people leave Australia permanently each year. This means that we could have a refugee intake of 20,000 p.a., plus other special cases, and achieve nil, or at least very low, net migration.

Economic Costs

Dr Jane O’Sullivan’s submission to the Productivity Commission, re ‘Public Infrastructure Report’ shows that each new person added to the Australian population costs taxpayers over $100,000 in infrastructure. [16]

“[P]opulation growth and ageing will affect labour supply, economic output, infrastructure requirements and government budgets… Total private and public investment requirements over this 50 year period [to 2060] are estimated to be more than 5 times the cumulative investment made over the last half century…”

[17] Building the equivalent of a new Canberra every year is not cheap.

The Federal Government is dominated by the growth lobby and State governments compete for the prestige of a higher population. They promote immigration and advertise for immigrants. They rezone prime agricultural land for housing. Local governments then increase rates, which forces the famers off the land. Local councils also convert pleasant suburban streets to high-rise ghettos to collect more rates. The costs of the extra services are paid for by existing tax- and rate-payers.

Choking Cities

‘Population growth is great for business but governments can’t keep up. Roads are clogged and public transport is groaning. The health and education systems can’t cope with demand’. [18]

Employment

With many new workers and the loss of our manufacturing capacity, we are already unable to employ many of our young.

‘Between 2011 and 2014 the number of jobs increased by 400,000 but new migrants took 380,000. Some 240,000 more young Australians entered working age compared with those who retired, but they had to compete for only 20,000 extra jobs’. [20]

Agriculture

Australia looks big on the map but it’s an old, dry, infertile continent. Sprawling cities are taking some of our best land—land high on the two factors of good soil and reliable rainfall. (These are the areas shaded dark green on the map.) Much of Australia is marginal agricultural land (shaded yellow), and the greater part is unsuitable for any agriculture (shaded red).

Australia might be able to feed a domestic population of 60 million for a while, but this would leave us without food for export to pay for imports. A sustainable population must stay below 30 million; over that we start to sink to third-world standards.

Climate Change

Climate change will badly affect Australia’s agriculture with reduced irrigation in the Murray-Darling Basin and marginal land becoming arid. The so-called inexhaustible Great Artesian Basin is now declining. The idea of Australia as the food bowl of Asia is a myth!

Minerals

Iron ore reserves were once thought to be almost inexhaustible. But all of the high grade, easily accessed mineral deposits in Australia have been mined out and energy consumption in mining has increased by 450 per cent in the last 40 years. [21] We are one of the world’s largest exporters of LNG, but this leaves little for the local market. [22] In order to find more, pressure for fracking access to coal-seam gas builds up. This risks polluting underground water and increasing food insecurity.

THE GROWTH LOBBY

While all Australians pay the cost of population growth, big business profits from it. Their self interest in growth is understandable. But it is unconscionable that politicians, most journalists and many academics support them. (See ‘How the Growth Lobby Threatens Australia’s Future’, James Sinnamon.) [23]

The growth lobby finds ways to silence its critics. In the USA the prestigious Sierra Club was given $100 million on the understanding that it would not continue to oppose the one million p.a. migrating to America. [24]

The slur of racism by the growth lobby has stifled the population debate.

BUT

Martin Luther King understood the cost of growth. Was he a racist?

‘I don't think slowing the rate of growth is blaming immigration or ethnic communities’
(Voula Messimeri, Chairwoman of the Federation of Ethnic Communities Councils of Australia). [25]

Immigrants also suffer the effects of population growth. Poor migrants suffer the most.

The lobby promotes the fear of an ageing population

But the Australian Bureau of Statistics reports that ‘Even large difference in the level of net immigration will have a relatively small impact on the age distribution’. [26]

Natural increase is still strong so our population would not decline without net migration. Immigration makes us bigger, not younger. Besides the aged contribute to society in many ways—ways worth billions of dollars. [27]

What about humanitarianism?

Australia’s policies serve the growth lobby, not the greater good. There is no virtue in luring away the best and brightest from poor nations. Australia poaches doctors and nurses from developing nations to service the huge rise in our population. We take about 1000 doctors and 2800 nurses a year. How many more come on temporary or 457 visas?

Most of Australia’s migrants come for economic reasons; this is no way to help the world’s poor. We should accept refuges and provide desperate women of the third world—who procreate even when their children are starving—with the means of family planning.

THE ENVIRONMENT

‘Instead of controlling the environment for the benefit of the population, perhaps it’s time we control the population to allow the survival of the environment’. [28]

Sir David Attenbourough (celebrated conservationist)

The World Wildlife Fund reported in 2014 that the world wildlife population had been halved between 1970 and 2010. The human population doubled in the same peroiod contributing directly to 82 per cent of the loss of wild life. [29]

We are already destroying the environment by overstocking our poor soils, habitat destruction and deforestation all of which causes soil loss and salination. We are doing this in 2015 to support nearly 24 million people. What would we do to support 64 million?

GLOBAL WARMING

Global warming is our greatest immediate threat and as Figure 3 shows, Greenhouse gases increase with the world’s population.

And Australia’s per capita emissions are the highest in the OECD. [31]

Our responsibility to other people, those now living and those yet to be born, and our responsibility to other species, all mean that Australia must curb its runaway population growth. The world must slow down and stabilise too.

Prepared by Roland Johnson for Sustainable Population Australia Vic/Tas.
www.population.org.au

This material is available in pdf form for downloading and printing here: Population Flyer cropped.pdf

References

[1] tp://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Overpopulationaccessed 18 January 2015
[2] Roy Beck, < a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPjzfGChGlE">World Poverty, Immigration and Gumballs The Population Reference Bureau’s annual World population data sheet shows a world population of 7.238 billion in mid 2014 and 1.137 billion in mid 2013, an estimated increase of 101 million people, 98 million of this increase in less developed countries. See www.prb.org
[3] Roy Beck, op. cit.
[4] Paddy Manning, ‘“Global” risks on food security mean us too’, The Age, 3 December 2011, p. 16
[5] The United Nations’ projections for 2050 include 9.746 billion (medium), 16.218 (medium high) and 24.834 billion (high).tp://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/longrange/longrangeExecSum.pdfaccessed 18 January 2015
[6] Data on growth calculated from the ABS, Demographic Statistics, Catalogue no. 3101.0 various issues. The average NOM for 2007 to 2013 was 237,000 pa and the average annual growth rate was 1.81 per cent
[7] See World Bank http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.POP.GROW accessed 18 January 2015
[8] Projection series 20, published online with, Australian Bureau of Statistics (2013), Population Projections, Australia, 2012 (Base) to 2101, Catalogue no. 3222.0.
[9] The average total fertility rate from 2008-09 to 2013-14 was 1.9085. Calculated from ABS, Demographic Statistics, Catalogue no. 3101.0, June 2014, p. 39.
[10] See ibid.
[11] ABS, Demographic Statistics, July 2014, Catalogue no. 3101.0, p. 26
[12] Katharine Betts (2010), ‘A bigger Australia: opinions for and against’, People and Place 18(2), pp. 25-38
[13] World Bank data bank
[14] Nick McKenzie and Richard Baker, ‘Terror touches down’, The Age, 7 August 2014, pp. 1, 4.
[15] See Dr. R Birrell, Sydney Morning Herald online , 7 August 2014.

[16] Jane O’Sullivan (2014), ‘Submission to the Productivity Commission Inquiry into Infrastructure provision and funding in Australia’, p. 3 http://www.pc.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0004/135517/subdr156-infrastructure.pdf
[17] Productivity Commission (2013). An Ageing Australia: Preparing for the Future — Overview. Melbourne, Productivity Commission, p. 2
[18] Alan Kohler, ‘Healthcare and infrastructure spend tearing budget apart’, The Australian, 6 May 2014, p. 30
[19] Source: Department of Infrastructure and Transport, Bureau of Infrastructure and Transport, Road vehicle-kilometres travelled: estimated from state and territory fuel sales, Report 124, Canberra, Department of Infrastructure and Transport, 2011, pp. 372-3
[20] Bob Birrell and Ernest Healy (2014), Immigration and Unemployment in 2014,/em>. Monash University, Melbourne, Centre for Population and Urban Research
[21] Simon Michaux (2014) ‘The coming radical change in mining practice’ in Jenny Goldie and Katharine Betts (Eds) Sustainable Futures: Linking population, resources and the environment, CSIRO Publishing, Collingwood, Victoria, pp. 75-76
[22] See ‘Reform needed to minimise LNG export impact on manufacturers: report’, ,em>Gas Today, 24 July 2014 http://gastoday.com.au/news/reform_needed_to_minimise_lng_export_impact_on_manufacturers_report/088251/ accessed 25 November 2014
James Sinnamon, "How the growth lobby threatens Australia's future."

Kenneth R. Weiss, ‘The man behind the land’, Los Angeles Times 27 October 2004
Quoted in Mark O'Connor and William Lines (2008), Overloading Australia: How governments and media dither and deny on population, Envirobooks, Sydney, p. 145
ABS (2000), Projections of the Populations of Australia, States and Territories: 1999-2101, Catalogue no. 3222.0, p. 2
For more on the benefits (and costs) of demographic ageing see Katharine Betts (2014), The ageing of the Australian population: triumph or disaster?, Centre for Population and Urban Research, Monash University
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/David_Attenborough accessed 25 November 14
Living Planet Report 2014 accessed 25 November 2014
Population data are from United Nations Department of economic and social affairs http://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/Excel-Data/population.htm ; Carbon emissions data are from Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Centre (CDIAC)
The Garnaut Climate Change Review, Chapter 7, ‘Australia’s emissions in a global context’ 2008, updated in 2011 http://www.garnautreview.org.au/chp7.htm

"In a country with baby bonuses, paid parental leave schemes and a high immigration intake, to argue that rapid growth can't be avoided is like claiming that speeding is inevitable while your foot is on the accelerator." (Melvin Bolton)

We so often hear about Melbourne's 'livability' according to the specious and self-fulfilling criteria of the 'Economist group' that it is nice to hear about "Another major liveability index for cities is produced by the American consulting firm, Mercer. "The Mercer Quality of Living Survey for cities is continually being updated and it ranks more than 220 cities on scores under dozens of different criteria of liveability. In this list Vienna has come top for three years in a row and Sydney has come in at number ten, also for the past three years. Melbourne doesn't make it to the top ten and the other nine have populations smaller than Sydney's." (Melvin Bolton)

Transcript from "Finding the Right Size"
Ockham's Razor, Sunday, 14 December 2014.

Robyn Williams interviews science writer, Melvin Bolton, who talks about the work of Professor John Burden Sanderson Haldane

Robyn Williams: J.B.S. Haldane has always been a hero of mine, mainly because he was bonkers, but also because he was seriously clever. I ran a poem of his in the Science Show a couple of weeks back: ‘I wish I had the voice of Homer, to sing of rectal carcinoma…’ or something like that. Yes, Haldane wrote a poem about his tumour. He also used to blow himself up during the war to test explosive atmospheres in ships and submarines because he wanted to make them safe for soldiers and sailors. Haldane was a sort of aristo, Eton and Oxford, but also, weirdly, the communist party and he wrote magnificent pieces on sciences. He was a great science communicator, writing classics, like the once you’re going to hear about from Melvin Bolton in Yeppoon in Queensland.

Melvin Bolton: Many years ago, in England, I was trying to find my way in the dark round the back of a building, when I tumbled into a pit that led to a coal cellar. I came out in nasty bruises and had to walk with a stick for fortnight, but it occurred to me that if I'd been a much heavier person I would not have got off so lightly. It really is true that the bigger they are, the harder they fall.

I had this in mind at the time because I'd been reading an essay On Being the Right Size by J.B.S. Haldane. Haldane was a mathematician but he was so brilliant he could turn to whatever he liked in science and in 1933, after teaching biochemistry at Cambridge, he became professor of genetics at University College London. Haldane was one of the pioneers of genetics. It was he who came up with the word 'clone' in the sense that we know it today, and some of his predictions were taken up by his friend, Aldous Huxley, and worked into the novel Brave New World.

In that essay on being the right size, Haldane pointed out that if a beetle fell into a mineshaft, a kilometre deep, it would be none the worse for it. Even a mouse might get over the shock if the ground wasn't too hard, but a rat would be killed, a human would break up, and a horse would splash.

This is because the resistance to falling through air is proportional to the surface that meets the air to cause friction. And as volume and weight are scaled up, the surface area gets relatively less. A horse might be a thousand times heavier than a rat but would have only about a hundred times the surface to slow its fall.

The relationship between weight, or volume, and surface, largely accounts for all the sizes and shapes that we see in nature because things can't just get bigger and keep the same shape. It would be impossible, for instance, to have a rhinocerus shaped like a gazelle. A rhino might be four times the length of a gazelle but if the gazelle were scaled up to be four times as long, it would be 64 times heavier—its weight would increase from 30 kilos to nearly two tonnes. On the same-shaped legs it would lie in a heap, unable to stand up.

Nature can never break the laws of maths and physics so has come up with ways of working around them, just as engineers and planners do, but I'll come to that in a minute. I first want to make the point that big animals and plants are more complicated than small ones because they have to be; it's a consequence of being bigger. Single cells, like bacteria, were the only form of life on Earth for more than a billion years, and they are still highly successful but they must stay small. All exchange with the outside world has to take place through the surface, and the centre of the cell has to be close enough to the outside for gases and liquids to move adequately, just by diffusion.

When cells join together to form bigger forms of life, the surface gets proportionally smaller, the centre gets further from the outside, and there needs to be some sort of transport system such as blood or sap that can deliver the necessities of life a lot faster and more efficiently than can happen by simple diffusion.

In nature, there is often a need for bigger surfaces in places that can't be expanded any further—such as inside heads or intestines. In a bird's head the brain is quite smooth on the outside but a chimpanzee has to pack many more neurones around its brain so the surface has a lot of folds or convolutions—which increase the area without making the head any bigger. This is a process that's gone furthest of all in humans.

A small Intestine needs a huge surface to deal with digestion so the lining has projections, like the pile on a carpet. This increases the surface enormously. It varies between individuals, but an adult small intestine has a surface area of thirty to forty square metres—which is close to half a badminton court.

In a final example, let's take a simple shape like an egg, no projections of any sort. Inside a bird's egg the developing chick has the equivalent of a placenta close to the inside of the shell. The chick gets all its oxygen and gets rid of carbon dioxide through tiny holes, or pores, in the shell. and that presents a problem with bigger eggs. An emu's egg is about six times longer and wider than a sparrow's egg but it weighs about 250 times as much. The shell has to be twelve times as thick and a thick shell is a huge barrier to the passage of gases. The problem has been solved in birds by having the pores closer together, and with a much bigger diameter in thicker shells.

Evolution is essentially a numbers game and nature is made up of compromises that have evolved, step-by-step, minute by minute, through mutations and the filtering effects of natural selection over millions of years. The best compromise emerges because everything that's exposed to natural selection is weighed in the balance for such long periods of time.

Engineers, and others who build things and create new materials, are working with exactly the same constraints set by the laws of physics and maths, and they sometimes get their ideas from nature.

Professor Haldane, in his essay on size, did not get into the topic of deliberately trying to copy nature, but he did make the point that just as there is a best size for every animal, so there must be for every human institution. He pointed out that in ancient greece all the citizens could listen to a series of orators and then vote directly on matters of legislation. So philosophers at that time had reason to believe that a small city was the largest possible democratic state.

New methods of communication had changed things a lot by Haldane's time and they've changed a lot more since then. Although when you look at all the duplications of our old federal system you might think that the tyranny of distance is still a major problem in Australia.

So is it still true today that there is an optimum size for human institutions, for nations, for cities? We hear political leaders on all sides of politics declaring that they believe in a big Australia. They don't say how big, though they can't possibly think we can keep making things bigger and bigger indefinitely. They just say they believe in a big Australia as if it is a matter of belief; an article of faith.

Why do they believe it? Usually they say it's because it will produce a better quality of life for all Australians. Is that likely? How many Melbournians think that life will be better in a Melbourne that's twice the size it is now, with twice the number needing housing, services and transport?

Is there any evidence for thinking either way? Well, we can start by looking at the Human Development Index. This is published each year by the United Nations Development Programme and it ranks the UN member countries according to how well their people are doing in terms of health, education, lifespan and general standard of living.

For the past few years, Australia has come second after Norway, with Denmark third. Another index, that goes further than the United Nations one, is put out each year by the Economist Intelligence Unit, based in London. Originally called the Quality of Life Index, it's now known as the Where to be Born Index, which I suppose makes it sound more foward-looking for prospective parents as well as investors. In addition to all the basic welfare issues of health, education, security and so on, it factors in people's feelings of satisfaction with life, based on scores derived from Gallup polls. It even takes climate into consideration.

And with all that, the interesting thing is that it places exactly the same countries in the top ten that the United Nations comes up with. They are in a slightly different order; Australia comes second, with Switzerland first and Norway in third place, but the same ten countries top the list. Six of those top ten countries have smaller populations than Australia.

We can look at cities in the same way. Every year, the Economist Intelligence Unit produces liveability rankings for cities around the world. These are based on scores reached under headings that include stability, healthcare, culture and environment, education and infrastructure. In the most recent report, released in 2013, Melbourne came top of the list of 140 cities, followed by Vienna and Vancouver. Of the top ten cities, seven were smaller than Melbourne.

Another major liveability index for cities is produced by the American consulting firm, Mercer. The Mercer Quality of Living Survey for cities is continually being updated and it ranks more than 220 cities on scores under dozens of different criteria of liveability. In this list Vienna has come top for three years in a row and Sydney has come in at number ten, also for the past three years. Melbourne doesn't make it to the top ten and the other nine have populations smaller than Sydney's.

Now, these league tables may not prove anything but they certainly don't offer any support for the belief that getting bigger and bigger will do anything to improve the quality of life for all Australians. They suggest, if anything, that Melbourne and Sydney are doing well despite their size, not because of it.

And such evidence as there is from surveys here in Australia indicates that most Australians are putting up with high population growth rather than wanting it. Why we are putting up with it is another question entirely, and your guess is as good as mine.

When Big Australia believers are quizzed about their reasoning, some of them back off and say simply that our growth rate is unavoidable so we just have to keep on accommodating it—building upwards, over farmland, making more flyovers, freeways, by-passes, tunnels, whatever it takes to cope with centres getting further and further from peripheries and all the other complications of increasing size.

But in a country with baby bonuses, paid parental leave schemes and a high immigration intake, to argue that rapid growth can't be avoided is like claiming that speeding is inevitable while your foot is on the accelerator.

Professor Haldane, in case you are wondering, died in 1964 at the age of 72. His full name, incidentally, was John Burden Sanderson Haldane and he died in India, having emigrated there eight years earlier. He had also taken to wearing Indian dress, remarking that "sixty years in socks is enough." I doubt that he really did have a problem with socks, although, if there was a lot of stretching and shrinking ... no, surely not.

Robyn Williams: Maybe not Melvin, but I’ll tell you one thing that happened when Haldane went to India: Everyone expected him to turn up with tons of shiny apparatus. Instead he gave the Indian scientists pencils and paper and asked them to count the leaves on trees. As a result they found that there were two crop species instead of one. Selecting the best enabled them to double the yield. Yes, Haldane was a genius, if nuts. Melvin Bolton comes from Yeppoon in Queensland.

Next week Ockham’s Razor comes from Western Australia where Dr Peter Underwood tries to corrupt his grandson. That’ll be in Science Extra.

RT's Abby Martin interviews Kambale Musavuli, Spokesperson for Friends of the Congo, about the vital role of cobalt in many industrial and electronic manufactures and the use of cobalt in predator drones. The interview connects the genocide of many Congolese with corporate and government cobalt mining. Entire villages have been bulldozed to around mines.

(Original video is at http://rt.com/shows/breaking-set-summary/211303-police-us-congo-gas/)

The world does not realise the importance of the Congo's cobalt reserves in the political misery there and the human rights abuses. Because of this it does not realise the role that foreign investment in mining cobalt plays in the dispossession, disorganisation, and death of people in the Congo and in the maintenance and support of dictatorships.

People in the population movement often ascribe poverty, misery and dispossession to overpopulation, especially when the poverty is obvious, as in Africa. What they often fail to realise is that it was not always so. My books in the Demography, Territory, Law series explore this. [1] And here is another article - about Ethiopia's population history, Development caused overpopulation in Ethiopia that sumarises some of the arguments against what we are usually told is so.

Congo's overpopulation has coincided with its 'development' and industrial exploitation. Today Australia imports many educated professionals from the Congo - in a way that can only weaken its social structure further. Australian billionaire, Gina Rhinehart has suggested that Australians are uncompetitive, comparing them with Africans who work for terrible wages: " ... Africans want to work and its workers are willing to work for less than two dollars a day." (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gina_Rinehart This is what invasion, 'development' and 'industrialisation' do to a country and they do it on purpose because it creates a situation of abject wage slavery. A variation on this was to simply marginalise the original indigenous populations if they were sparse or small-scale, then import slaves, prisoners or immigrant labour - as in Haiti, Costa Rica, Australia, and many other Pacific islands.

In the late 19th century, when European 'development' began, the population of Congo was estimated at less than 4 million. Under King Leopold of Belgium the population was grossly disorganised and dispossessed by genocide and other violence. In 1950 the total population of Congo was estimated at 12,184,000. This was already a huge increase over the population it had had when its was structured according to tribes. By 2010 the population was 65,966,000.

In 1876, Leopold II of Belgium formed the philanthropic organisation “Association Internationale Africaine“ (International African Association) and became its single shareholder. Typically, Leopold's industrial take-over was spearheaded initially by missionaries, who prepared the way.[2]

"Leopold's rule over the Congo involved a complex interlocking of private enterprise and state power. In the first place, his operations were carried out in the name of the International Association of the Congo. This Association, independent of Belgium or any other state but completely under Leopold's private control, proceeded to set up a sovereign state in the Congo, with Leopold as king and its own army, the Force Publique. Later on, the Congo State would lease out large tracts of its territory to private companies, which exercised virtual state power in their own zones.

A further twist was that the state (i.e. Leopold himself) held blocks of shares in the companies. Leopold's agents got local chiefs to sign treaties yielding up their sovereignty. The treaties also granted Leopold the land, a trading monopoly, control of roads and waterways, mineral and forest rights and - most ominously of all, the right to labour services. The chiefs had no knowledge of written documents, the French language or the legal concepts of capitalist Europe, and may have been under the impression that they were making treaties of friendship. Moreover, Leopold's men used chicanery such as delivering an electric shock from a concealed battery to convince the Africans that they possessed magical powers. All 'vacant lands' were declared to be state property. This conveniently ignored the reality of traditional land use in Africa. Often, apparently uncultivated land was just lying fallow as part of a farming cycle. Other land was used for hunting or gathering firewood. In any case, the state would determine whether land was 'vacant' or not." Source: http://www.thehobgoblin.co.uk/journal/h32002_RC_Leopold.htm

NOTES

[1]My books, Demography, Territory, Law: The Rules of animal and human population, Countershock Press 2013 and Demography, Territory, Law2: Land-tenure and the origins of capitalism in Britain, Countershock Press 2014, explore this fallacy generally, but it is not hard to work out for yourself that there is something wrong with the assumption that Africa, India, China and overpopulated islands in the Pacific, could not always have been like that.
[2] "The Butcher of Congo: King Leopold II of Belgium" and http://www.thehobgoblin.co.uk/journal/h32002_RC_Leopold.htm

Migration is hardly a solution to world poverty and conflict, but the mainstream media predictably push this line. Even the Guardian, for all its purported democratic values, continuously pushes for open borders without disclosing that these also facilitate a right-wing agenda for cheap imported labour sources and the crushing of local industry and employment. Its recently issued 'special report' entitled, "Hardline Australia, confused Scandinavia and tense Russia: the global immigration picture" http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/nov/30/hardline-australia-confused-scandinavia-and-tense-russia-the-global-immigration-picture has been described as 'an appalling, if predictable, piece of propaganda."

An appalling, if predictable, piece of propaganda from the Guardian.

Dr Jane Sullivan, of Sustainable Population Australia, writes

"The idea that immigrants actually might have a negative impact on native people is completely rejected, so that any ill-feeling is attributed to racism and far-right neo-nazi manipulation of the great unwashed (who are too lazy to do the work that the immigrants are doing).

No mention of population pressure at all - not in what is causing them to move, nor in the concerns of receiving countries. All immigrants are saints, all native people who don't welcome them with open arms are facists.

When the Guardian does actually refer to the size of the immigration flows, it is full of inconsistencies - China's welcoming attitude to immigrants is contrasted with the UK's meanness, having just said that China has only given 5,000 permanent residency visas since 1980!

Spain is claimed to have had a net exodus since 2010, but they give the figure of (positive) 600,000 as its net immigration for 2010-2014. The massive inflow to Spain, adding 10% to its population between 1999 and 2009, is not connected by the Guardian in any way with the massive unemployment now driving them away.

The Guardian makes a big thing of how silly it is for the Spanish to resist immigration when they have more people leaving than coming (if in fact they do), but completely rejects any idea that the Scandinavians or Australians might have justification given their high net inflow."

As for the piece on Australia, apart from greatly understating the size of our net immigration (it's been well over a million in the past 5 years, but they say 750,000), the author chides that the conversation is all about refugees and ignores the bulk of immigration, then proceeds to talk only about refugees and ignore the rest of our immigration.

Naomi Klein in This Changes Everything - good work but confusion persists

The same Guardian incoherence is to be found in the otherwise superb works of another Guardian writer and author, Naomi Klein. She writes in This Changes everything, Penguin, 2014, how international trade laws have effectively destroyed local employment and manufacturing initiatives, yet campaigns for open borders.

"One of the key provisions in almost all free trade agreements involves something called 'national treatment', which requires governments to make no distinction between goods produced by local companies and goods produced by foreign firms outside their borders. Indeed, favoring local industry constitutes illegal 'discrimination.' This was a flashpoint in the free trade wars back in the 1990s, precisely because these restrictions effectively prevent governments from doing what Ontario was trying to do: create jobs by requiring the sourcing of local goods as a condition of government support. This was just one of the many fateful battles that progressives lost in those years."

Naomi writes specifically about the contradictory impact of globalism on efforts to combat climate change, which she recognises as needing to be locally based. She is however unable or finds it unwise to criticise the same contradictions when it comes to citizens' rights to self-determination. It seems that where she comes from you can only tell so much of the truth - or perhaps this is mainly due to ignorance. After all, she has only just begun to realise how important our biophysical environment is. She can see how economic ideology conflicts with environmental health but she hasn't worked out how the politics of open borders conflict with democracy and citizens' rights.

On the issue of immigration, whilst she is vocal on Australia's treatment of asylum seekers, she apparently knows nothing of Australia's intake of vast numbers of planned invited economic immigrants in the context of changes to Australian industrial law, which now make immigrant workers a threat to local workers. Nor of how the issue of asylum seekers has been used as a wedge to prevent sensible discussion of population numbers.

"We drive down wages, ship jobs overseas, destroy worker protections, hollow out local economies, then wonder why people can't afford to shop as much as they used to. We offer those failed shoppers subprime mortgages instead of steady jobs and then wonder why no one foresaw that a system built on bad debts would collapse."

Whilst she talks about indigenous groups using their land-rights to fight against fracking and other carbon emitting processes, she also barracks for more open borders, which is antithetical to the survival of indigenous peoples and land, which is defined endogamously and territorially. She also uncritically endorses internationalist corporate 'environmental organisations' because they are 'large'. The ones she cites are known for their business models and to prioritise open borders over democracy, the conservation of natural ecologies and local self-determination - just like the capitalist globalist deregulators. It seems that, in this case, the author of No Logo, Picador, 1999, cannot tell the difference between brand names and actual products.

"As we will see, communities trying to stop dangerous oil pipelines or natural gas fracking are building powerful new alliances with Indigenous peoples whose territories are also at risk from these activities. And several large environmental organizations in the U.S. - including Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, the BlueGreen Alliance, and 350.org took stands in support of demands for comprehensive reform of the U.S. immigration system, in part because migration is increasingly linked to climate and also because members of immigrant communities are often prevented from defending thesmelves against heightened environmental risk since doing so could lead to incarceration or deportation."

Klein's work in This Changes Everything should not, of course, be dismissed for these failings. It is another great contribution to critical political literature.

Population numbers are now a democratic issue because the two big parties and the Greens are colluding to push extreme population growth. People will vote against population growth if given the opportunity because it is causing a decline in urban lifestyle. Some of the problems it is causing is severe competition for schooling, hospitals, housing and places on public transport. People are upset by the destruction of established built environment to keep pace with this imposed population growth. If we were able to achieve zero population growth over time and reduce our per capita consumption, we would use less coal, possibly even stop needing to use it and we would never need to turn on the desal plant. It's a no-brainer really.

Steven Armstrong is running in Albert Park as an independent. He is, however, supported by Sustainable Population Party, which, because it is federally registered, cannot run a candidate in a state election. Steven was a federal candidate for Sustainable Population Partyc in the last federal elections.

He says that he is running in regard to Sustainable Population Party because it would be a pity to let opportunity go by. He can offer some democratic choice to the people of Albert Park over the population issue. He can exercise the mechanisms of the party to find out what's possible when they concentrate their efforts on one electorate.

Decline in urban lifestyle a symptom of population growth

Steven thinks that people might vote for him due to their awareness of the symptoms of population growth. He gives a few examples:

There is a decline in standard of urban lifestyle:

- You can't get on tram or train in the morning.
- If you want to go from Albert Park to visit someone in Northcote, it takes an hour to get there on a Saturday afternoon. - People can't get their children into school.
- One in three houses needs to be knocked down and replaced by dual occupancy.
- It worries people to see houses knocked down.

Population numbers are a democratic issue

He says that, in Elwood high density happened in 1960s and 70s but that process is starting again and will proceed throughout the electorate. Population growth presents an issue of democracy in that Greens, ALP and Libs are all colluding in pushing extreme population growth. The populace don't have a choice except in electorates where the Sustainable Population Party runs a candidate.

What Steven would like to do if elected or if more like him were elected

He would like to hold the balance of power in a parliament and hold the government to carry out wishes of people with respect to population growth. He could then advocate for zero population growth. If he could achieve that, then any new infrastructure would represent an improvement in our lives rather than a desperate attempt to catch up with growing population. Our quality of life would improve.

He would like the future to be similar to that period in Australian history when successive generations enjoyed a better standard of living than the previous one. He observes that that process has stopped and gone into reverse. He says that we need to get it back to how it used to be. With zero population growth, this would be a place where people enjoyed enough space in the inner city parks, where they could get transport around the city, where the level of health care was not swamped by immigration and where housing was once more affordable.

The [natural] environment on which we all depend; can the decline be halted by stabilising population?

Steven says,

"If population stabilised and per capita use of the environment decreased in energy, space and waste production, then our environment would improve greatly. We would never ever have to turn on the desalination plant. We would not use more coal; we would use less of it. We may even be able to stop using it completely. So the environment would benefit greatly from a stable population."

An old mate of mine and his son are doing their bit to promote awareness of climate change. Good on them. They arranged a presentation and invited an audience of around 100 people. The focus was on what WE could each do to reduce emissions. The direct link between population growth and climate change was not identified as a key issue.

Examples of storm impacts in the Philippines and acidification of the sea had been provided to explain the impacts of climate change and carbon dioxide. I provided the following supportive comments afterwards:

"I learnt a few things. The 4 million left homeless in the Philippines would have been 2.7 million if their population hadn't grown 50% in the previous 20 years.

The sea has already lost 90% of its fish, and that is caused by the same force as climate change. Acidification and over fishing are caused by population growth. All new oil and gas projects have design lives of 30 to 70 years. It's unlikely they will be abandoned before those lives end. But the number built to meet expanding demand can be immediately be impacted by family planning.

Can't overcome the sense of absurdity associated with deconstructing the environmental argument in this way. The population issue is no more challenging than emissions. It's just a different part of the same problem.

Seems to me that if you go to the effort of creating awareness of sustainability in the form of climate, why wouldn't you also mention the driving force behind both GDP growth and environmental destruction? The US economy has been driven by population growth for over 100 years. In 1962 there was one Wal-Mart. Now there are 8500 of them all selling fish. There are no cod left off Newfoundland.

As I have always sincerely believed; half an argument is like no argument because the big picture problem can't be solved with half a solution!"

As an ironic footnote to this story, the Wal-Mart Syndrome is my definition of what happens when economic growth driven by population growth goes to ridiculous extremes. As Russell Brand has explained, the six Wal-Mart heirs have wealth equal to the total wealth of the US's 185 million poorest citizens. Population growth was a driving force behind the creation of that massive inequity.

As I sat listening to the climate change presentation I was aware that many of the baby boomers in the audience were multi-millionaires who were born at the right time in the right place. These days you only need to have bought 4 houses with borrowed money 30 years ago to be worth more than $10 million.

So these fortunate wealthy epitomise the Wal-Mart Syndrome. The population growth that drove their relatively easy path to wealth has actually dispossessed future generations of similar opportunities. In the context of the climate change debate I am more convinced than ever that those who choose to disconnect the climate change (emissions management) debate from its Siamese twin population growth are living in exactly the state of denial that climate change activists think exists amongst those they are trying to enlist to their cause.

"half an argument is like no argument".......and that is why nothing is happening. WE can do nothing if we deny the most important half of the scientific reality; Exponential Population Growth and Australia's leading role in this debacle.

The Federal Government is not the sole responsible for Australia's planned and economic immigration; in fact the States seem to be leading it. State governments and political parties tend to try to mislead Australians on this very issue, so I felt it was time to write an article. Now is the time to head to your local member's office and ask him or her what he or she is going to do about this. If you don't get a sensible answer, vote small parties before Lib, Lab or Green.

Your most telling examples of how the States impact on immigration are the State migration websites. The States 'nominate' migrants. I think the Feds just pretend to 'vet ' them. In Victoria it is www.liveinvictoria.gov.com.au, in WA www.migration.wa.gov.au/, South Australia, https://www.migration.sa.gov.au; in Queensland, migration.qld.gov.au/, ACT: www.canberrayourfuture.com.au/, Northern Territory: www.australiasnorthernterritory.com.au/; Tasmania, www.migration.tas.gov.au/
And there are the national pages: www.immi.gov.au/Work/Pages/Work.aspx

The States pressure the Federal government for immigration. They organise to redefine areas of the states as regions in need of migration. Jeff Kennett managed to reverse Victoria's negative population growth in the 1990s in part by doing this. He made it possible for rural people to sponsor nephews and other distant relatives as immigrants because they were places in need of migration for workers etc. I think following on from him, State governments around Australia did things like make their CBDs 'regions in need of immigration'. Note that on the NT site above, for instance, there is a display that explains that it is a "designated area Migration Agreement".

The States are in charge of land, water and power. They earn money from land-sales through stamp duties and rely a great deal on this. The political parties are invested in land, development and finance (including banks) as well and States have institutions which facilitate private investment in public land for property development. It is all quite incestuous.

The States also earn money from private public development, over our protests. How many of you knew that "Places Victoria" is actually the Victorian Government's public-private property development arm, and that it is a payed up member of the Property Council of Australia - which heads up the Australian growth lobby. And, for those who care about the homeless, the Department of Human Services, Office of Housing, is also a member. Truly, in the land of the not so lucky anymore, the foxes are credentialled chicken guardians.

(By Jane Dreaper Health correspondent, BBC News) The new easy-to-use contraceptive device will be available to women in poorer countries for just $1. The new easy-to-use contraceptive device will be available to women in poorer countries for just $1. An agreement has been signed which will make contraceptive injections available to women in 69 of the world's poorest countries. It is an injection - but not as you know it. The special device, with a smaller needle and no traditional syringe, will be sold at just $1 a unit. An agreement - signed in the past few days - will make the new way of giving contraceptive injections available to women in 69 of the world's poorest countries. The deal has been reached between the Gates Foundation, the drug company Pfizer and the Children's Investment Fund Foundation. Previously the technology has been used for giving hepatitis B jabs in Indonesia. Burkina Faso was the first country to use it for contraception.

The special device, with a smaller needle and no traditional syringe, will be sold at just $1 a unit.

An agreement - signed in the past few days - will make the new way of giving contraceptive injections available to women in 69 of the world's poorest countries.

The deal has been reached between the Gates Foundation, the drug company Pfizer and the Children's Investment Fund Foundation.

Previously the technology has been used for giving hepatitis B jabs in Indonesia. Burkina Faso was the first country to use it for contraception.

Soré is using contraception for the first time and decides the new device is the best option for her.

Soré Néimatou, 20, has a boyfriend, and is visiting a family planning clinic in the capital Ouagadougou.

"I don't want to get pregnant," she says. "I want to get married first."

She has never used contraception before, and is given a choice of methods. She opts for the new injection - called Sayana Press.

'More acceptable'

The pre-packaged device means there is no need for health workers to prepare a syringe.

The new device's all-in-one design avoids the need to prepare a syringe.

The drug is dispensed by simply squeezing a plastic bubble, giving Soré the protection she wants for three months.

Thanks to the design, which is called Uniject, there is no risk of spillages or dosing errors, and because the device cannot be re-used, it cuts out the risk of infection due to needle-sharing.

The simplicity of the device means health workers can be trained more quickly too - a vital consideration for developing countries.

Kadidia Diallo, the midwife who helped Soré, says the device is more acceptable for women in rural areas.

She said: "Normally for injections you have to put them in someone's bottom, or the top of their leg, but with this - you use the arm.

"That's an advantage for women living in the bush. Many women don't come forward for injections if they have to pull their dresses up - but this is more discreet."

Injectables

In early trials women reported less pain at the injection site than with conventional jabs, too.

Rahimata wants to become an English translator, and is keen to avoid getting pregnant and disrupting her studies.

18-year-old Rahimata Tiendrébéogo also uses the new device.

She wants to go to university to study English and has seen too many of her friends get pregnant - especially the poorer ones.

"It's not good for people to have babies so young because they are students…they don't have money or the means to bring up children.

"I'm independent and I want to be responsible."

A lack of contraception in sub-Saharan Africa remains a problem.

Almost a quarter of women of child-bearing age in Burkina Faso would like to plan their families by getting pregnant when they want to. Women there have six children on average.

Although the proportion of women using contraception in Africa has doubled in the past two decades - to 26% - it is much harder to obtain for women who are poor, uneducated or living in a rural area.

The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 222m women in developing countries would like to delay or stop conception, but are not currently using any form of contraception.

Injectable contraceptives are a widely-used family planning method among women in developing countries, where the lifetime risk for death due to a maternal cause can be as high as one in 15.

The next countries to start using Sayana Press are Niger, Senegal and Uganda.

The launch comes after many years of work at Path, the organisation behind the design of the device - and money from international donors.

Health workers in Niger are being trained how to use Sayana Press.

A Path spokeswoman, Sara Tifft, told BBC News: "Burkina Faso was one of four countries identified for this initial pilot introduction, as an outgrowth of the 2012 Family Planning Summit in London."

The summit was co-hosted by the UK government.

International Development Secretary, Justine Greening, said: "Access to modern, safe and reliable family planning methods is vital.

"Without the ability to choose for themselves when they have children and how many they have, women lose the opportunity to participate fully in their economies and societies."

The makers of Sayana Press hope that one day it could even be used by women to inject themselves with contraception at home

There is now a long record of interventions in foreign countries that have been followed by floods of refugees. For Ethiopia modern development began at the end of the 19th century. In a recently recirculated 2008 article, Irish journalist, Kevin Myers wrote despairingly of Ethiopia's overpopulation and the hopelessness of giving more aid. "By 2050, the population of Ethiopia will be 177 million; the equivalent of France, Germany and Benelux today, but located on the parched and increasingly Protein-free wastelands of the Great Rift Valley." Myers grimly anticipates a massive overflow of emigrants with poorly nourished brains to Ireland, to America, to Australia.[1] So, why is Ethiopia in such a mess? Was it always thus?

I think that Ethiopia's problems go back to the end of the 19th century and were caused by industrialisation and furthered by 'development aid' in the cause of more industrialisation.

How long has Ethiopia been overpopulated for?

In the late 19th century Ethiopia's population was only 4 or 5 million, when Mennilik II began 'modernisation'.

After Mennilik's modernisation programs, which included massive land 'reforms' (enclosures), Ethiopia's population climbed to 10 million. In 1950, as development continued, the population climbed to 18.3 million. In 2010 it is 83 million and climbing rapidly still.

What changed?

Ethiopia is one of the oldest sites of human civilisation and international trade. It had a variety of populations within, mostly rural, including hill tribes who farmed using ploughs. The various tribal populations mostly kept to their traditional areas and were sustainable within them, although for a long time there have been conflicts between adjacent states and an ancient slave trade along certain routes.

Ethiopia after 'development':

In the late 19th century there were massive land 'reforms':

The land 'reforms' coincided with dispossession and 'integration' of clans and tribes with Mennelik II who was influenced by Russian imperialists. Thrown off their land - particularly those on the plains, the people drifted to the cities, which were growing as agriculture was industrialised and roads and electricity were installed.

This process destroyed local self-government and sustainable local economies where there was probably still men's and women's land, and marriage opportunities would have been kept low through kinship rules that limited approved spouses, [2], with late menarche the rule, and low fertility through local traditional birth control practices, including contraception, spousal non-cohabitation, abstinence, delay of coitus [3] and co-operative breeding [4] (where people live in an extended family around a principal fertile couple, taking the roles of servants, aunts, aunties).

As happened in the Netherlands and in Britain,[5] local populations were disorganised by classes that got control of the food production and government and, lacking the land that had once brought them independence, they were obliged to move to new settlements, with only their labour to sell. This is the kind of system where women and children become slaves to their husbands, fathers, uncles and brothers.

Irrigation was put in place and former grazing ranges were intensively cultivated, which required dispossessing the peoples that had led sustainable lives there for millenia, without overpopulation. Malaria became a huge problem, indicative of land-disturbance and new population movements.[6]

In the 1970s there were more huge land reforms.

In the 1980s there were mass government resettlements.

The 'reform' has not stopped. It has accelerated.[7]

It is not difficult to find many accounts of how foreign aid assisted in all these 'modernisation' projects that led to the dispossession of the peoples of Ethiopia and the surrounding regions and to the current overpopulation problem and enslavement of women, for which more 'development' continues to be recommended, under the malignant pretext that overpopulation was Ethiopia's eternal burden.

What is in it for the countries driving more 'development' in Ethiopia, Somalia, Eritrea, Egypt etc? One of the major reasons for foreign powers to maintain these countries in disorder is so that the foreign powers can continue to dominate the surrounding region with military forces, supposedly to safeguard international investments. The pretence is that these African countries and all those around the Red Sea and to the North of Syria need international aid and management, however it is clear to anyone aware of the petroleum in this region that Ethiopia could be a source of primary wealth, as it was for other reasons in Ancient Egyptian, Greek and Roman times. [8]

Development, War and Refugees

Australians rightly complain that their country is overpopulated.[9] They also rightly complain that refugee and asylum-seeker numbers are adding to this problem. But they fail to link these problems to the wars the Australian government backs in the regions where the asylum seekers come from. Australia, like the United States in the film, Mother of 7 Billion,[10] adds over-consumption to its overpopulation problem. To maintain our commodity production and our importation of new residents to keep our land-sales up, we rely on huge amounts of petroleum and one of the most important sources of petroleum is the region bordered by the Land of Punt.

If Somalia, Eritrea, Ethiopia and Sudan had maintained their efficient local economies, there would be no excuse for foreign troops and corporations to be in the region, but Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Sudan would probably all be wealthy through association with the oil producing countries.

Instead the oil producing countries and the regions buffering them are in constant state of flux, overpopulation, poverty, and war and the foreign powers actually rule the region. We hear of Somalian pirates, trying to get control of the oil, but we call our own pirates 'peace keepers'.

NOTES

[1] Kevin Myers, "Somalia is not a humanitarian disaster," The Irish Independent, 2008

[2] Fertility opportunities would have been kept low through kinship rules requiring endogamous marriages that reflected the local environment with up to 8 degrees of incest avoidance and other variations that greatly decreased mating opportunities. See Sheila Newman, Development, Territory, Law: The Rules of Animal and Human Populations, Countershock Press, 2013.

Details of the wide variety of these kinship impediments to marriage and fertility in Ethiopia can be found in Siegbert Uhlig, (Ed.), Encyclopaedia Aethiopica: He-N, Otto Harrassowitz GmbH & Co. KG, Germany, 2007, pp. 55, 405-406, cited by hbdchick at https://hbdchick.wordpress.com/tag/exogamy/. Although the afore-cited Encyclopaedia states that being unmarried is not an option in Ethiopia, this is contradicted by the presence of extended families. "The extended family arrangement is frequently found among Ethiopian families since children, male or female, who have married continue to live with their family. In some cases, unmarried aunts, uncles, cousins and even close family friends continue to dwell with the nuclear family. " http://www.africa-expert.com/ethiopia/family-and-housing/ ftp://ftp.cgiar.org/ifpri/ElizabethB/Ethiopia%20papers/diFalco_Bulte_2013.pdf,
Mhairi A. Gibson and Eshetu Gurmu, "Land inheritance establishes sibling competition for marriage and reproduction in rural Ethiopia"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3038728/#!po=21.4286: "We use rich anthropological, demographic, and socioeconomic data from five traditional rural villages in Ethiopia (Table S1), where wealth remains positively correlated with reproductive success (characteristic of preindustrial societies)."

Another likely indication of earlier prevalence of local birth control methods would be family-size trends in older women who may have had more links to traditional villages. The results varied according to tribal origins as well as religion. A survey in 1986 showed that childlessness varied from 20% to 3% in the earliest cohorts (women aged 59 or older) compared to 12% to 2% in the most recent cohorts (women aged 30-39). Although much of this was attributed to successful treatment of sexually transmitted diseases the article concludes that there is more to it than that.- See more at: http://www.popline.org/node/372469#sthash.OatvN3Yl.dpuf

[3] John Knowles (Lead author), Report, "History of Birth Control Methods," Katharine Dexter McCormick Library and the Education Division of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, 2012, http://www.plannedparenthood.org/files/2613/9611/6275/History_of_BC_Methods.pdf

[4] Cooperative breeding is similar to the extended families described (which existed in most pre-WW2 societies) in note [2] Traditional Ethiopian societies were comparable to traditional European ones in many ways, so I don't mean for the following references to imply that they were all hunter-gatherers, However, for some modern evolutionary research of the phenomenon in terms of inclusive benefits etc in human societies, see, for instance, Smaldino, Paul E., Newson, Lesley, Schank, Jeffrey C., Richerson, Peter J., "Simulating the Evolution of the Human Family: Cooperative Breeding Increases in Harsh Environments," http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0080753 and Hill, Kim, and Hurtado, A. Magdalena, "Cooperative breeding in South American hunter–gatherers, " School of Human Evolution and Social Change, Arizona State University, PO Box 872402, Tempe, AZ 85287-2402, USA, http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2009/08/18/rspb.2009.1061.full.pdf+html

[5a] Sheila Newman, Demography, Territory, Law 2: Land-tenure and the Origins of Capitalism in Britain, Countershock Press, 2014.

[6] David N. Weil, "The Impact of Malaria on African Development over the Longue Durée,"
Brown University and NBERhttp://www.indiana.edu/~econdept/workshops/Fall_2010_Papers/Malaria_and_Early_African_Development.pdf: "The current geographic distribution of malaria impact may not accurately represent the historical burden of the disease. Packard (2007) gives numerous examples of how human activity has changed the intensity of malaria. Clearing forests and introducing irrigation often produces the marshy environment needed for breeding of Anopheles mosquitoes. When large tracts of land are consolidated and controlled by a small number of landowners, people living on these lands are often deprived of the tools for properly tending to it and for avoiding malaria infection. This problem is exacerbated when seasonal labor is used, as migrants may come from non-malarious zones and lack immunity, then return to these zones carrying malaria with them. As for Africa, he notes that “while climate and the presence of highly efficient vectors contributed to the persistence of malaria, conditions of production played an equal if not greater role." Webb (2008) similarly describes how the introduction of agriculture led to malaria endemicity in lowlands throughout the Eurasian landmass. Population density is also important to the nature of malaria burden. Packard argues that in the African contexts, low population densities associated with mobile hunter-gatherer populations would have been unable to support the P. Falciparum infection because of the speed with which the disease exits or kills the human host. The emergence of Anopheles gambiae is also believed to closely associated with the development of agriculture. For all these reasons, the current distribution of malaria in Africa today is potentially a poor proxy for the historical distribution." See also malaria references in Sheila Newman, Demography, Territory, Law 2: Land Tenure and the Origins of Capitalism in Britain, Countershock Press, 2014.

[7] "Ethiopia, 30 years after the famine," by David Smith (23 October 2014). "Three decades after images that shocked the world, country has become darling of the global development community – and the scourge of the human rights lobby." http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/22/-sp-ethiopia-30-years-famine-human-rights

[8] "This is pure common-sense commercial logic,” ... “There are numerous discoveries along the East African Rift in other nations and also it ends basically in Yemen, which is a known oil-bearing territory." "http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-07-21/gazprombank-s-gpb-global-signs-oil-exploration-deal-in-ethiopia.html; Ogaden Basin in Ethiopia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogaden_Basin; "Africa's next Frontier - Ethiopia?" http://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/Africas-Next-Oil-Frontier-Ethiopia.html]

[9] And some of us can see that the same thing is happening here, with 'development' as has happened to Ethiopia.

[10] I spoke at a screening of Mother of 7 billion in 2013 and was uncomfortable at some of the assumptions made in the film. Most difficult for me was the assumption that Ethiopians had always had huge families. There was seemingly no inkling that Ethiopia had ever been anything except poor and overpopulated - of the sudden leap from 4 million to 83 million. When one considers Ethiopia's remarkably long and impressive history, this is quite an oversight. It was because of this film that I started writing an article on Ethiopia's long and different past, but it has taken me until today to get this short version up.

Note that the United Nations is made up of many associate members, and this event includes the National Bank as a sponsor. I am publicising it because Katharine Betts will be speaking at it, and she has a good scientific approach to the issues around the concept of an 'aging population'. The notion of a 'demographic transition is also controversial.

United Nations Association of Australia (Victorian Division)
Sustainability Leadership Series

Join us at our upcoming seminar, entitled
Demographic
Transition: Addressing the economic and social impacts of an ageing population: Is there a silver lining? on Thursday 13th November in Melbourne.

Held in partnership with National Australia Bank as part of our

Sustainability Leadership Series, this seminar seeks to discuss the opportunities and challenges associated with an ageing society.

It will notably cover how the Australian government together with the corporate and civil society sectors are addressing the impacts of our ageing population on workforce participation and productivity, on our financial and welfare system, including on pensions,
and on the provision of aged care and other social services. It will also consider the issue of age discrimination, particularly in the workplace, and how to change business attitudes towards older people.

Keynote speaker

• The
  Hon Susan
  Ryan AO, Age Discrimination Commissioner

Guest speakers

• Rowan
  Arndt, Diversity and Inclusion Specialist, Sageco
• Katharine
  Betts, Adjunct Associate Professor of Sociology, Swinburne University of Technology
• Sue
  Hendy, Chief Executive Officer, Council on the Ageing Victoria
• Emily
  Millane, Research Fellow, Longevity and Positive Ageing Project, Per Capita

Facilitator

• Colette
  Browning, Professor of Healthy Ageing and Director of Research, School of Primary Health Care, Monash University

Seminar details

Date: Thursday 13 November, 2014
Time: 1.30pm Registration/Networking, 2pm-5pm Seminar
Venue: Hosted by National Australia Bank, The Academy (The Bowl Room), 500 Bourke Street, Melbourne
Registration Fees: Please note all fees are inclusive of GST but do not include Trybooking service fee ($0.30).
Business/Government: $180
Non-profit/Academia: $140
UNAA Members: $140
Student: $50
Registration deadline: 5pm, Tuesday 11 November

World and European overpopulation as viewed by a warm, humane, generous, down-to-earth and witty Irish senator in a surprising response to an interview about lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender rights (LGBT rights). I am a great fan of the interviewer, Oksana Boyco, but in this episode her interviewee outshines her in my opinion, making for a most unusual program. David Norris, who speaks Irish and Hebrew, and has lived in Israel, is also famous for a recent parliamentary speech on Israel and Gaza, which I have embedded at the end of this article.

Heteronormative Russia

In this interview rt's Oksana Boyko, interviews Irish Senator, David Norris, on whether it is defensible for Russia and some other countries to 'delay' the introduction of gay marriage and public acknowledgement of homosexuality as an acceptable lifestyle. Oksana says the world has been rather harsh on Russia over its 'slowness' to adopt western recognition of homosexual rights at institutional level. Cannot the world try to understand that Russia needs to go through some legislative 'back and forth'; some 'legislative transition' on these issues, asks Oksana. Homosexuality is not criminalised in Russia, but 'homonormative advocacy' is illegal.

Different views on population decline

Oksana actually suggests to David Norris that there is a concern that the fact that homosexuals have many fewer children than heterosexuals means that homosexual marriage rights could affect the birth rate and increase the threat of population decline. This is one of the reasons that she questions the advisability of 'homonormative advocacy'.

Norris's answer is an utter breath of fresh air. He says that, in his life, world population has tripled and what a good thing it would be if the birth rate were to decline. He notes that Europe's population uses an unsustainable amount of materials and energy, which would be reduced if the population were to reduce.

Contraception and not wanting to live in misery is the main reason the birth rate has dropped in Europe. Homosexuality has nothing to do with it, says Norris.

Ancient Greeks and parliaments today

In response to Oksana's suggestion that open homosexuality is a relatively new concept for Russia, Norris comes back at her with how homosexuality was present in 67% of 'primitive' societies according to Margaret Meade and was central to Ancient Greek civilisation and how so many giants among the Ancient Greeks were homosexual and celebrated their homosexuality, which was the dominant paradigm in Ancient Greece. (Indeed, the evidence in the Greek classics of the truth of this seems incontravertible.)

When Oksana puts it to David Norris that his views on homosexuality and the ancient Greeks may have cost him the Irish parliamentary presidency some years ago he says that he was the victim of a defamatory campaign by the mainstream press, whom he has successfully sued on this matter.

The program finishes with Norris having a dig at Vladimir Putin's bare-chested horse-riding (reference to a famous photo). Oksana mentions drolly that bare-chested horse-riding is something that Russian men like to do, and not an erotic specialty of Putin's.

Throughout I wondered if Oksana was playing devil's advocate, since she seems to enjoy the whole interview, and both she and David Norris remain in good humour.

David Norris's famous recent speech on Israel in Irish Parliament on 5 August 2014 follows here:

You can read more on David Norris on wikipedia, among many other sources, here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Norris_%28politician%29#Education_and_academic_career

It seems that he typically tells the truth where others do not dare to. For instance, he has said, of drug legalisation,
"The blunt instrument of criminalisation is not working because of the vast profits it generates for organised crime ... my view is that the welfare of the community, including the victims of drug abuse, may be better served by having access to quality controlled, legally prescribed drugs." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Norris_%28politician%29#Education_and_academic_career It is indeed unusual for an elected politician to acknowledge that illegal drug profits are so important that they will always undermine criminal laws against them.

The plain truth:

- 10,000 years ago humans and our livestock occupied just 0.01% of all the land-air vertebrate biomass on earth.
- Now humans and our livestock occupy 97% of all land-air vertebrate biomass.
- Humans and our livestock now consume over 40% of earth’s annual green land biomass production.
- 1 million people born every 4½ days. People live longer.

What does this mean?
- 50% of All Vertebrate Species will be gone by 2040.

There is no embed function for the following film, but it is very worth looking at:

http://www.cultureunplugged.com/documentary/watch-online/play/7350/Call-of-Life--Facing-the-Mass-Extinctiony

What have we done?

- 90% of Big Ocean Fish gone since 1950.
- 50% of Great Barrier Reef gone since 1985.
- 50% of Fresh Water Fish gone since 1987.
- 30% of Marine Birds gone since 1995.
- 28% of Land Animals gone since 1970.
- 28% of All Marine Animals gone since 1970.
- 50% of Human Sperm Counts gone since 1950.
- 90% of Lions gone since 1993.
- 90% of Monarch Butterflies gone since 1995.
- 93 Elephants killed every single day.
- 2-3 Rhinos killed every single day.
- Bees die from malnutrition lacking bio-diverse pollen sources.
- Extinctions are 1000 times faster than normal.

What’s going to happen to us?

- Ocean acidification doubles by 2050.
- Ocean acidification triples by 2100.
- We are on track in just 13 years to lock in a near term 6°C earth temp rise.
- Mass Extinction will become unstoppable and irreversible in 40 years.
- Permian mass extinction of 95% of life took 60,000 years 250 million years ago.
- Dinosaurs mass extinction took 33,000 years after asteroid impact.
- Anthropogenic mass extinction will take 300 years max.
- This mass extinction is 100x faster than anything before us.
- Antarctic meltdown now irreversible and unstoppable.
- Arctic methane burst is irreversible and unstoppable within current system.
- It takes 10 times as much rated “green” energy to displace 1 unit of fossil energy.
- Efficiency and conservation only causes more growth within our current system.
World Bank says we have 5-10 years before we all fight for food and water.

What we are doing right now!

- We combine bacteria DNA with plant DNA and eat it.
- We are eating stuff that never, ever existed on earth before.
- We put man-made, computer designed, synthetic DNA into our food.
- We put nano metals and nano particles into our food.
- We put poisonous pesticides and herbicides directly into food cells.
- There are thousands of different chemicals in our foods.
- We are turning into genetic mutants because of our food.
- We are wiping out all life on earth because of our food.
- After mass extinction, genetically modified trees may be all we leave behind.

WHY THERE IS NO GREEN ENERGY

Our “green” energy hi-tech future requires:

- conflict minerals,
- rare earth elements,
- heavy metals,
- nano metals and graphite.

Search for “rare earth mining in China” on YouTube and see what special hell your solar panels and wind turbines produce in Mongolia. China can do this because they have undercut all the world’s production of Rare Earth Elements (REEs) with low wages, low currency and no environmental enforcement. They can do this because they ignore the radioactive thorium that comes with mining high-value, heavy rare earth elements. Rare earth elements can’t profitably be mined outside of China without using radioactive thorium, the mining by-product found with heavy rare earth elements. We can’t afford to mine REEs while treating thorium as radioactive waste instead of as a profitable energy source. Burning thorium will pay for heavy REEs and provide the low-carbon base power “green” energy requires.

Graphite is used in all of our so-called “green” powered batteries and is mined in China emitting deadly fine air particles resulting in a lethal smog that washes down from the skies in an ash laden rain that covers crops and water. China recently shut down several graphite mines because of the pervasive smog. Graphene, a nano-material produced for batteries, is water soluble and can cut through human/animal cells. Both graphite dust and graphene are deadly to humans because of their small size. You don’t want to breathe this stuff.

"The Catch22 of Energy Storage" (Energy Collective article)

Solar cell manufacturing produces 3 green house gases that are over 10,000 times worse than C02. They require all kinds of deadly liquid acids to manufacture. Solar panels lose efficiency at the rate of 1% per year lasting 20-25 years. The expensive inverters they require have to be replaced every 5 to 10 years up to 4 times over the life of the panel. The new thin cell panels use nano materials and are even more toxic with shorter lifespans. It doesn’t matter how “clean” the latest experimental solar panels are because existing manufacturing plants will stay open to recoup major investments. Manufacturing just five wind turbines produces 1 ton of radioactive residue and 75 tons of toxic, acidic water used to leach out the required neodymium. Wind turbines only work at 25% of their rated capacity 90% of the time. Over 2 million children died in the Congo for the conflict minerals green energy needs. Thousands of people die in Chinese mines every year for the minerals green energy needs. Prof. Jian Shuisheng of the Jiatong-University estimates the production of just 6 solar panels requires one ton of coal. Since green power is intermittent, it would take at least 10 times the rated amount of “green” energy to displace just one equivalent unit of 24/7 fossil energy because your so-called 100 Watt solar panel delivers zero Watts at night and batteries are heavy toxic $energy hogs. One company in the U.S. cut down 5 acres of trees to build a solar farm to power a plant for the production of plastic bags. Green power will not be enough. Part-time energy and billions of batteries adds up to death to all life on earth just from destructive ecological inertia.

Ozzie Zehner explains “Green Illusions” in a series called, "Talks at Google":

Tim Garrett explains why in a three-part lecture:

- one dollar equals 10 milliwatts
- why we can’t decouple growth from emissions.
- why efficiency & conservation leads to more energy growth.

Did you know that the new $2 billion Ivanpah solar plant in the Mojave desert is a death ray that ignites birds in mid flight? When their bodies fall to the ground, they leave smoky trails in the sky called streamers. These birds are attracted to the bugs who are attracted to the shiny, pretty lights, just like us. It is estimated as many as 30,000 birds per year will die this way during huge migrations at just this one green power plant. Bigger solar plants of the same type are in the works including one near Joshua Tree, next to a wildlife sanctuary. During Ivanpah’s construction, up to 3,000 endangered desert tortoises suffered a temporary loss of legal protection and were allowed to be killed by heavy diesel equipment and materials. Thousands of slave workers die in China’s mines every single year to help produce the exotic minerals used in its construction. This is referred to as the “Green Economy”. If we changed the whole planet to green power, we would kill the earth we call home.

Civilization is slowly collapsing while the earth is quickly dying. My credentials? I cut grass in a trailer park in Canada.

For example, the Ukraine is geopolitically important for many reasons; including its value as a food bowl and as an export route for oil and gas. The Ukrainian people are secondary to the interests of the foreign powers that seek to influence or control the territory and its resources.

The current turmoil in Syria and Iraq has been preceded by French and British military intervention respectively in the early 20th century, combined with imposition of new territorial borders. This was arguably an autocratic foreign assault on the region. People subject to somewhat arbitrarily defined borders have different histories and different vested interests little understood by the foreign autocrats. The same was true of the foreign assault on Australian Aborigines when their territory was first invaded in 1788. Have a look at any capital city in Australia. There are "Boundary Roads" everywhere.

Armchair experts sit around hypothesising about what should or should not be done, based on their subjective versions of humanitarian and strategic principles. Many know little of the history of the regions they discuss and use terms such as "democracy" and "territorial borders" to define right and wrong.

In Australia in particular, neither the Government nor the people have the ethical credentials to justify interference in geographically remote regional conflicts.

Australia is a country founded upon the principles of invasion and dispossession of "indigenous" peoples. That foundation remains the cornerstone of government policy to this day. It is an autocratically imposed policy that has nothing to do with democracy. This "invasion" does not prioritise humanitarian intake. In its current form it focuses on attempting to cherry pick healthy and relatively wealthy, educated people for their alleged "financial" value; at the expense of refugees.

Government media seeks to justify a government policy of invasion and dispossession in the interests of something it vaguely refers to as economic growth, although the economic impacts of extreme population growth are not investigated in the public interest. Politicians control decision-making on what lines of public inquiry deserve due diligence. Mass migration has always been the "robot-mode" status quo in Australia and politicians don't even question a policy that many other countries would regard as outlandish.

Between 1788 and 1900 Australia's population rose to 3.7 million. From 2002 to 2014 it rose another 3.8 million. This invasion is accelerating. This is extreme, unsustainable, Government imposed, amoral, financially motivated "developed world" population growth.

The ABC is not governed by any laws that can be enforced to hold it accountable for failing to comply with its Statutory Duties of impartiality and integrity. ABC agendas appear set by politicians rather than by analytical thinking.

The ABC's approach to the climate change debate has been the ABC–branded Carbon Tax debate, analogous to a doctor advising a patient that the only therapy for treatment of obesity is exercise (economic incentives to reduce carbon emissions), while encouraging the patient to eat fattening food (extreme population growth driving extreme emissions growth) from a company the doctor owns. The doctor also deliberately conceals the fact that eating is the primary cause of explosive weight gain.

So we have a lawless, government sanctioned, propaganda machine purporting to act as a humane and democratic voice of the people, while failing to address some of the most pressing moral and environmental issues in Australia. Population growth stands out as an issue of critical importance.

The Challenger Space Shuttle disaster occurred in similar circumstances. The Solid Booster Rocket seals failed causing a catastrophic explosion because NASA approved the launch at an unacceptably low ambient temperature in full knowledge of the risk. The 7 astronauts killed in the explosion were not informed of the risk.

NASA abused its position of dominance by prioritising a political desire for launch over competent risk management.

The ABC is a news and current affairs broadcaster. It has limited, if any, expertise in the sciences or in risk management. Yet it uses opinionated bias as a basis for concealing critically important information from public policy debate. Whether that bias is driven by Government or the ABC itself is immaterial. It is clearly contrary to the public interest and it is defined as unlawful, if not criminal, by the ABC Code of Practice.

The relationship between the adverse humanitarian, social, environmental and economic outcomes of population growth and the rate of that population growth is off the ABC agenda.

Environment and community groups from across Australia are calling on Federal Environmental Minister Greg Hunt to save the fragile environment of Westernport Bay amid ongoing concerns over the Coalition’s One Stop Shop policy.

The massive Hastings port expansion plan and associated land transport corridors will not only devastate the internationally important Ramsar-listed wetlands of Westernport, but also impact on the liveability of Melbourne’s south-eastern suburbs, the groups say.

“The Napthine Government wants to push through its expansion plans under the Major Transport Projects Facilitation Act 2009 – the same fast-track process that approved the East West Link project, which is about to face a Supreme Court challenge,” said Ariane Wilkinson, lawyer at Environmental Justice Australia.

“The only way Victorians can prevent the destruction of this protected wetland, home to many threatened species, is by appealing for Greg Hunt to intervene under federal environmental laws. Yet even this avenue of last resort is under threat from the Federal Government’s One Stop Shop policy.

“If the One Stop Shop policy is implemented, Minister Hunt can simply hand over his powers for this project to the Victorian Government.

“The Victorian Government has a clear conflict of interest in this project as both the proponents and regulators.

“The One Stop Shop policy will remove the last vestiges of federal oversight.

“We have no confidence that Victoria’s major projects legislation will provide adequate protection for the nationally important environment in Westernport.

“The Victorian Government has a clear conflict of interest in this project as both the proponents and regulators.

“And just like with the East West Link project, the road and rail connections to an expanded port will be assessed by this major projects legislation, which will be a real concern to communities along the transport corridor,” Ms Wilkinson concluded.

Simon Branigan, Marine and Coastal Projects Officer at Victorian National Parks Association, commented:

“The port expansion will not only impact the home of our iconic fairy penguins, but also the homes and lives of residents in Melbourne’s south-eastern suburbs.”

“According to the State Government’s Victorian Freight and Logistics Plan a rail transport corridor will need to be built from Dandenong and run through the middle of suburbs such as Caulfield, Toorak and Richmond, potentially requiring compulsory acquisitions.

“All this for a project that is an environmental disaster in waiting.

“Oil spill modelling shows that even a relatively minor oil spill would spread quickly throughout the bay, threatening fish, penguins and the beautiful beaches between Somers and Flinders.

“Under the One Stop Shop, the approval of the Hastings port expansion will be a fait accompli.

“We are urging Minister Hunt to stay true to his promise that if there is clear conflict of interest in major developments, he will not hand over his powers under federal environment laws.”

Jeff Nottle, chairman and spokesperson for Preserve Western Port Action Group, warned the project threatens the local tourism industry and jobs.

“The Victorian Major Projects Act means a big rubber stamp hangs over this project, unless Minister Hunt retains his powers to assess it.”

“The project threatens our $600 million tourism industry and the 5000 jobs that rely on that industry. It has already impacted whales in the area due to underwater drilling. Fewer whales mean less income for tourism operators.

“This is Greg Hunt’s electorate. He can’t turn his back on the livelihood of his constituents or the importance of the Ramsar wetland.

“Greg Hunt must intervene immediately to stop the Victorian Government ruining the future of Westernport."

The environment groups calling on federal environment minister Greg Hunt to intervene are the Victorian National Parks Association, Environmental Justice Australia, Preserve Western Port Action Group, Westernport and Peninsula Protection Council, Blue Wedges Coalition and French Island Port Stoppers.

For comment

Ariane Wilkinson, lawyer at Environmental Justice Australia –
0403 364 771
Simon Branigan, Victorian National Parks Association – 0409 087 278
Jeff Nottle, Chairman at Preserve Western Port Action Group – 0419 158 232

Download media backgrounders

Oil spill impacts on Westernport bird species
Oil spill impacts on Westernport seagrass, mangrove and saltmarsh

Download reports

Impact of proposed Port of Hastings expansion on the birdlife of Western Port

Impact of proposed Port of Hastings expansion on seagrass, mangroves and salt marsh

This is a huge scandal with far reaching serious National consequences and implications. The following represents my personal view on the 457 visa scandal and its ramifications. The recently exposed corruption is the last bit in the jig saw puzzle of my understanding. I cannot "prove" much of what follows, it is supposition not fact, but I believe that I am fairly close to the overall truth.

See also: Napthine complains that population growth outstrips job growth.

What I think is this This scandal, has huge far reaching serious National consequences and implications. With perhaps more serious consequences that anything we have previously seen in the history of the Nation.

1. The nub of the matter: There has been serious corruption involving Department of Immigration and Border Protection(DIBC) employees. (Fact)

Question 1. Why were the allegedly corrupt perpetrators allowed to return to India (with the loot)?
Question 2. Why has there been no obvious DIBC or Government response to internal reports of serious mismanagement going back to 2008?

Further background details here http://www.theage.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/visa-fraud-suspects-fled-after-wiring-1m-overseas-20140807-3dbmu.html and below http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/breakfast/journalists-uncover-rampant-visa-fraud/5657050

This corruption does not come as a total surprise to me (or to DIBC). Corrupt procedures in the immigration industry have become almost standard procedure within the industry, and an essential and an accepted component of attaining the immigration numbers required. This is compounded by the impossibility of enforcing any compliance measures. In short, there has been tacit acceptance of corruption to further immigration goals. This is the problem.

I am suggesting that DIBC and this Government wish to close down publicity and Public discussion of this issue. (The previous Labour Government was equally culpable, and therefore they can be expected to support any cover up measures). Both major Parties have had involvement in misusing and abusing the immigration system for their own narrow advantage, mainly political, and over many years (decades), in ways which they would prefer the Public not to know about. (a more serious version of the recent Labour Government approach to HSU fraud and corruption issues).
This misuse may be of the types exemplified by the Slipper/Comcar/winetour or the Labour mates/Obeid/NSW Coal mine licences, (which though serious are fairly inconsequential in the long term, however they do set the tone) . Or they may be more serious, such as those they would be individually be held to account for, if matters became public, say through a Public or Judicial inquiry. Governments will avoid this at all costs (as with the HSU and Liberal party cash donation issues).

Put simply, I believe that there has been widespread political misuse and abuse of the immigration system mainly for political ends; but possibly also for other corrupt reasons, including financial corruption.

A test of Government intentions and its integrity will be whether there is a purposful response to obvious corruption within the Public Service. Similarly, whether the current 457 visa integrity Review (http://www.immi.gov.au/pub-res/Pages/reviews-and-inquiries/skilled-visa-programme.aspx) will address the corruption issue, and Government's possible response to this.

2. How did the current situation arise?

I suggest this started in about the mid to late nineteen eighties , when population boosting by immigration was introduced by PM Hawke (in 1985, after about 2 years in office) to boost immediate economic growth, (1989 had the highest immigration number since the World War). It is possible that Hawke was unaware of the longer term implications of his actions, but I doubt that his advisors (Treasury and the Public Service) were unaware. Perhaps, he was advised to ignore the long term consequences. Similarly the case with PM Fraser and the Vietnamese Boat people issue of the 1970's. Perhaps his only thoughts were "humanitarian".

Perhaps our Leaders were like that.

But once embarked on this National growth trajectory it became self perpetuating. (see also references below.)
This informal policy was picked up and enlarged by PM Howard (assisted by the resources boom) and later by PM Rudd (Big Australia) Governments.

It was a magic pudding policy, wherby benefits could be obtained ( and prizes bestowed) at no immediate, or only minor short term, cost. The perfect political formula. Since the major fiancial and social costs would be delayed for many years eg infrastructure and health/age care. Thus all the major costs were medium to long term and would be carried by others in the future (pass the parcel), and could safely be ignored in the short term.

The "magic pudding" approach was only achieved because of a refusal to conduct essential economic analysis and risk asessment. There was no critical examination of the justifications. Successive Governments, Ministries and Departments and the Media (including our fearless ABC) have done everything possible to avoid essential analysis; in fact they have impeded and disrupted analysis, partly through using selective inquiries, with predetermined conslusions and favourable terms of reference.

This approach has been very successful, aided by energy surpluses and low energy costs at the time, (boosting productivity), and apparently cost free in the very short term.

This process was supported and promoted by the overwhelming power, dominance and influence of the combined business/media (a Business/Government/Murdoch/ ABC/media combination) gives pro growth policies an unstoppable and huge advantage. Most of these parties obviously or indirectly stood to gain from this growth.

Unfortunately this developed into a ponzi immigration scheme, simply because once started the scheme had to be maintained at levels sufficient to maintain its limited benefits and avoid its disadvantages.

In the process, and as an adjunct to this, Governments have allowed, perhaps encouraged, DIBC to become an immigration factory, and not an impartial Public Service Department to safeguard the Public interest. In fact quite the opposite. This process has incidentally created the perfect conditions for official corruption.

An early example of political abuse of the system might be the actions of Liberal Politician Philip Ruddock who as a backbencher, and later as a Minister, managed to persuade immigration Authorities to boost Lebanese migration into his electorate. Possibly his main intention was for a political advantage ( 'buying' loyalty) in a marginal electorate, but allegations of financial corruption also were raised later in respect of "payments" for visas.

About 9 million people (60% increase) have been added to the population since 1980 (14.6 Million)much of this by immigration.

Thus about half the national wealth (eg Resources and existing infrastructure) has been given away in that time to overseas persons, with a further 50 % to be given away in the next 20 years or so. Incredible. So that in a period of about 50 years about 75% of the original total of National wealth (eg. resources and infrastructure) will have been distributed to overseas citizens. And for what?

Many of these new persons are now approaching retirement or old age with major cost implications for health, welfare and aged care services. This financial burden will become increasingly unaffordable in its present form. ( The Treasurer and PM are aware of this, hence the budget panic).

The Australian Public are not blameless in this, but most have been indoctrinated into new thinking; many have apparently done well from the situation, unfortunately most believe that it can go on forever and that they can hold onto their gains forever. Sadly not.

Many put too much store in the honesty of Government, and the Public Service and our Media.

Unfortunately the media, including the ABC (the last bastion), was so busy dancing to the Government tune that they forgot why they existed.

3. What are the consequences?

Well, firstly all the local benefits were for short term gains (mainly political) or to the overseas migrant beneficiaries of these actions.

However, the national consequences are long term. All Australians will be affected, not just for 10's of years, but for 100's of years and possibly for millenias ahead, by, for example, huge public expenditures as yet unacknowledged, a broken economy and intergenerational poverty and misery.

Poulation growth now appears to be uncontrollable, for political and economic reasons. Regarding the political reasons, too much power has been conceded to interest groups and marginal electorate minorities). Governments might like to do something, but the Public and interest groups, will not allow it, ( eg the current situation where even modest budget changes are impossible).

To change the current rate of population growth and immigration levels to the levels required in the shortest possible time frame, would seriously affect the whole economy and the immediate loss of some industries (eg Overseas Education, which would collapse overnight without a favourable PR Based visa system , Shopping Centres and Retail shopping, and City Unit Development). I cannot think of a single Industry that will not be impacted. I cannot see any Government choosing, or being allowed, to do this.

So they, and we, are doomed if they do, and doomed if they don't.

The best we can hope for is modest amelioration; any actions are 20 to 30 years too late for even modestly positive outcomes. The die is cast, irrevocably.

On any sensible assessment, Australia will find its current population overload impossible to manage into the future, in every way imaginable. (eg principally Food, Climate and Energy security; employment, education, health, welfare being secondary problems). Risk Factors such as cultural diversity and security will also be relatively minor issues in the overall problem, but will become totally unaffordable and unmanageable in any conventional sense.

References

http://www.abc.net.au/tv/populationpuzzle/immigration.html and book: Critical years in immigration

Tomorrow, Saturday 28 June 2014, thousands are expected to pour onto the streets to take a final stand against the monstrous $14 billion East West Link (EW Link) project about to be foisted on the long suffering people of Victoria by - in our view - the incompetent and increasingly unpopular Napthine Government. Demands of the rally are: scrap the E W Link Toll Road; rip up the contracts if/when signed; and invest in public transport.

Additionally the call has gone out for the Coalition to make the EW Link an election issue and to resist signing contracts before “the people” have spoken. Protestors will rally outside The State Library at the corner of Swanston and Latrobe Streets by 1 pm tomorrow, hear speeches and then march to Flinders Street Station.

Julianne Bell PPL VIC Secretary comments:

“Many of our allied groups will be forming one contingent to march together to draw attention to the looming threat to Royal Park and the many inner city parks along the route of the E W Link and City Link. We expect that a legion of children together with parents and grandparents who are concerned over the impact of the EW Link on the Zoo in Royal Park be marching alongside the parks groups. This project will, if it proceeds, cut an enormous swathe through Royal Park.

The City of Melbourne has estimated that, in this park alone, 5,200 trees will be axed for this project. These include 100 year old River Red Gums and the line of Moreton Bay Fig Trees in Macarthur Road planted by the famous Baron Ferdinand Von Mueller in early colonial days. We regard construction of the E W Link through Royal Park as an act of
gross environmental vandalism by the Napthine Government. Would the Mayor of London permit Hyde Park to be treated as free land to accommodate a new road through the city?

Rod Quantock President of PPL VIC points to the destruction of heritage suburbs from Collingwood through to Kensington along the route of the EW Link. He says:

“Not only will whole streets in Collingwood, West Parkville and Clifton Hill, where some families have lived for generations, be demolished but contractors plan to work on the excavation of the tunnel and construction of giant interchanges 24 hours round the clock. This will mean that huge areas of Melbourne will be rendered uninhabitable for years with the dust, noise, vibration and obtrusive lights and difficulty of access to some streets. All these advance plans have been made even though the Minister for Planning has not yet made his pronouncement about the findings of the 6 week long enquiry into the EW Link and advised whether the project has been approved.”

Numbers attending the protest tomorrow in the face of wild weather conditions will be an indication of the strength of public opposition to what is regarded as the most expensive and environmentally damaging infrastructure project ever proposed in Victorian history.

Contact: Julianne Bell Secretary Protectors of Public Lands Victoria Mobile: 0408022408

Source: Protectors of Public Lands Victoria Inc. (PPL VIC) 27 June 2014

Inside is the video of the Open Microphone session for members of the audience, including members of community groups for Must Melbourne keep growing. Motions passed calling for a national plebescite on population numbers and for a national conference on sustainable population taking into account State of the Environment reports.

We may replace this film with one taken from another angle which recorded the size of the audience, the applause and the show of hand on the motions. In the meantime this gives the content of the Open Microphone session.

In this report, Ernest Healy, spokesperson for the Moreland Planning Action Group, concludes that VCAT, together with the MCC, have created a precedent which overrides the intended meaning of government policy. He argues that the meaning of the Victorian government’s Policy on Commercial 1 zone can be interpreted to mean that, if the commercial potential of a commercial 1 site is poor, then its suitability for medium density residential development should also be deemed poor.

Moreland City Council – Density at all costs

On April 7th and 8th, 2014, the Moreland City Council opposed an application for the development of 14 three-storey townhouses on a Commercial 1 site in Xavier St Oak Park at VCAT. It did so on the grounds that the commercial site included a public road, for which the City claimed responsibility.

Despite this objection relating to the road, the MCC submission to VCAT made it clear that Council had no serious objections to the project proceeding on planning grounds.

In fact, the Council submission went to some lengths to discredit local resident objections to VCAT, which largely addressed planning criteria – parking, congestion, visual bulk, out-of character development.

Part of Council’s argument for the suitability of this development related to the site’s proximity to the Oak Park shopping centre and railway station.

However, Council’s argument to VCAT, that the townhouse development was suitable because of the close proximity to the Oak Park shops, flatly contradicted its own previous assessment of access to the Oak Park shops from the western side, published a month earlier, when Council staff assessed the Oak Park shopping centre’s suitability for inclusion as a Neighbourhood Activity Centre. The Oak Park shopping centre was rejected by Council officers as unsuitable for inclusion as a NAC because of poor accessibility from the western side of the shopping centre.

Because the proposed townhouse development was to the western side of the Oak Park shops, where access had been deemed to be poor, one would expect that Council would advise VCAT that the development did not have good access to the Oak Park shops and railway station. But, they did not. Consider the following two sets of statements

Again, the relevant statements relate to the question of ease of access to the Oak Park shopping centre from the proposed development site in Xavier St to the West.

Moreland City Council submission to VCAT, March 18, 2014- including response to objectors (residents) grounds:

“The proposal is an appropriate renewal of land that is currently underutilised given its commercial zoning and reasonable access to transport and shops.” (my emphasis)

“The subject land is located in an established urban area with good access to a range of infrastructure and services.” (my emphasis)

“The site is approximately 300 meters walking distance from Oak Park Railway Station. The Oak Park Village shopping strip is located just east of the station, providing good access to local shops.” (my emphasis)

Moreland City Council assessment of access to the Oak Park Shopping Centre, Published February, 2014:

“Access to the centre is provided via Snell Grove and Waterloo Road on the eastern side of the railway which is considered the catchment for this centre. The railway and topography to the west makes pedestrian and vehicle access to the centre from the west challenging. (my emphasis)

… the steep topography of western side of the railway results in poor pedestrian and vehicles access to the centre (i.e. steep, concealed underpass and no vehicle crossing point) from the west. The catchment would principally be east of railway line given this.” (my emphasis)
(MCC, MORELAND ACTIVITY CENTRE FRAMEWORK, REPORT 1 - FEBRUARY 2014, p. 53)

1. The MCC undertook to undermine resident objections to this development when a plausible case on planning grounds could have been made against it, in support of resident concerns.

2. In its submission to VCAT, the Moreland City Councils’ assessment of access to the Oak Park shopping centre from the Western side of the Oak Park Station flatly contradicted its recent, detailed assessment which deemed access from the west to be poor.

The Bigger Picture:

This instance raises serious doubts as to how the Victorian government’s Commercial 1 zone will be treated in cases where the commercial potential of the site is deemed to be poor – as is the case with many dilapidated shopping strips.

Having decided that the Xavier St site had little or no commercial potential, VCAT simply decided that, by default, the site could be treated almost solely as a residential development.

VCAT was simply not interested in discussing the meaning of the Victorian government’s
Policy on Commercial 1 zone, which can be interpreted to mean that, if the commercial potential of a commercial 1 site is poor, then its suitability for medium density residential development should also be deemed poor.

Commercial 1 zone:

‘Purpose

To create vibrant mixed use commercial centres for retail, office, business, entertainment
and community uses.

To provide for residential uses at densities complementary to the role and scale of the
commercial centre.’

(34.0115/07/2013 VC100)

One reading of this is that where the role and scale of the commercial centre is low, the potential for medium-density housing development will also be low. Here, ‘Complementarity’ relates to the creation of mixed-use centres, and does not mean that one use can be simply substituted for another where the other use is deficient.

VCAT, together with the MCC, have created a precedent which overrides the intended meaning of government policy.

In 2013 foreign investors obtained permission from the Victorian government to build or to buy 4,500 houses, amounting to some $18b worth of approvals. Numbers of houses falling into foreign hands are increasing, with the Chinese the biggest buyers and builders, followed by the Canadians, Americans and Singaporeans. There were 12,025 applications to invest in Victorian real estate according to an annual report for 2012-2013. Not one was rejected. On Wednesday 19 March 2014 the Treasurer, The Hon Joe Hockey MP, asked the Economics Committee to inquire into and report on Australia's foreign investment policy as it applies to residential real estate.

Although the date for submissions seems to have passed, the committee is still receiving them. Since most submissions have come from professional organisations with a financial interest in promoting more houses, there is a great need for members of the public who cannot afford housing to make submissions. Submissions

The Committee invited interested persons and organisations to make submissions addressing the terms of reference by Friday 9 May 2014. However it looks as if they are still accepting submissions.

Inquiry Status

Accepting Submissions

For an Australia going the way of the Philippines, we should take heed. Rural Filipinos are being murdered by real estate developers. Even those who survived the recent typhoons are being harassed by developers.Filipinos have been struggling for land-rights for centuries now, against colonisers. Although they are nominally a republic now, they are overrun by violent corporate forces, which are forcing them off rural land and turning it over to rich immigrants and housing estates. The history of the Philippines is another one where an idyllic Pacific island existed for centuries with low populations until colonisation.[2] The Philippines were invaded and ruled by Spain from 1821 until the end of the Spanish–American War in 1898, except for a brief period of British rule from 1762 to 1764. The Filippinos finally overthrew Spanish rule in August 1896, establishing the First Philippine Republic. In tragic irony, the United States took them over the next year as an outcome of the Spanish–American War. 1.4 million Filipinos died trying to defend themselves against the U.S. , in a war lasting six years until 1902. This period has been described as massive genocide perpetrated by the United States and also as its 'first Vietnam'. [1] The Catholic Church Has played a leading and shameful part in facilitating these problems since the initial Spanish invasion. Now the corporate developers of resorts and housing estates are continuing this scurrilous business.

How and why this rural land defender was killed

Article-obituary first published at http://focusweb.org/content/justice-ka-melon-and-his-family-stop-attack-peasants-and-peasant-leadersWe grieve with the family of Menelao (Ka Melon) Barcia, as we join the entire rural social movement in mourning the tragic and senseless killing of a peasant leader whose life was dedicated to the struggle for agrarian reform and social justice. We express our indignation towards the shameless perpetrators who committed this heinous crime.

Ka Melon Barcia, 58, was killed on May 2, 2014, at around 10 in the evening. He sustained four gunshot wounds, three on the chest and one on the head. Aboard an owner-type jeepney, Ka Melon with his wife, Maria Barcia, 55, and niece Romella Mallari, came from a neighboring town when two unidentified men riding a motorcycle ambushed them in front of a church at Sta. Cruz, Manibaog. Maria, 55, sustained two gunshot wounds in the leg and arm and is still in the hospital; Romella was wounded in her arm and leg. The two men tried to steal Ka Melon’s bag which contained important documents of his local farmers’ organization, ANIBAN-KATARUNGAN but Romella defended it and shouted for help. When people present in the scene rushed to their aid, the suspects fled.

Ka Melon, who served as the secretary of ANIBAN tirelessly and fearlessly fought to reclaim their 700-hectare lands being grabbed by real estate developers: FL Properties and Management Corporation/LLL Holdings, Inc. (FL/LLL), and more recently, by Ayala Land, Inc.. This land is located in the villages of Hacienda Dolores and Sapang Uwak, Porac, Pampanga. It was exempted from agrarian reform in 2006, despite being an agricultural area planted to rice, fruits, and root crops. More on this see http://focusweb.org/taxonomy/term/217

The assassination of Ka Melon, regarded by many as a person of commitment and principle, is the latest attempt to sow fear and to push farmers to give up the fight for agrarian reform. For years, farmers of Hacienda Dolores have experienced systematic harrasment and violations of their human rights—from verbal threats, physical attacks and intimidation, to criminalization, forcible eviction, destruction of crops and other properties, killing, and enclosure of the land, in which more than 200 farmers were refused entry into the lands they have tilled for years. ANIBAN’s president and the village captain Tony Tolentino has also been charged with different criminal cases.

Ka Melon’s murder is the latest episode in the unabated killings of farmers fighting for their lands. The increase in human rights violations, land enclosures and landlord impunity in the countryside has been happening in the context of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program’s looming ‘death’ and uncertain future. These atrocious acts might well be the new form of land dispute resolution of corporate land grabbers and government.

We add our voice, in the most emphatic way possible, to the public outcry against this brutal and senseless killing.

We call on the Philippine government, especially the Commission on Human Rights, Department of Justice, and the security sector, to have a sense of urgency and immediately order an investigation of Ka Melon’s killing, file appropriate cases against the perpetrators, and investigate why up until now, there is still no police blotter of the incident. We urge Philippine President Benigno Aquino III to lead the search for the truth and justice and put an end to these atrocious acts and other cases of human rights violations.

We call on the Philippine authorities to stop the land grabbing of agrarian farmlands and ensure the continuity, effective implementation and completion of the agrarian reform program as guaranteed by the country’s Constitution. Restore the farmers’ rights and control over their lands.

In the Philippines and elsewhere, small and peasant farmers produce much of the food and nurture the world’s collective ecological wealth. An attack on peasants is therefore an attack on society. This must be condemned in the strongest possible way by all.

We hold the Philippine government accountable for the rising incidence of extra-judicial killings and landlord and corporate impunity in the countryside. They must be investigated and punished under the law if found responsible for the death of Ka Melon and of other farmers and advocates of agrarian reform

Many have been widowed and orphaned by the continuous and seemingly unending killings of peasants and farmer leaders. We continue to hope that justice will be served.

Justice for Ka Melon and his family!
Stop land grabbing!
Save agrarian reform!

NOTES

[1] E. San Juan, Jr. (March 22, 2005). "U.S. Genocide in the Philippines: A Case of Guilt, Shame, or Amnesia?"

[2] Aram A. Yengoyan describes the easy ways and low density of the swidden farming Mandaya people in the Philippines in, "The effects of cash cropping on Manday land tenure," The Philippines, Chapter 13 from Ron Croncombe, Ed., Land Tenure in the Pacific, OUP, 1971

Immigration policy in Britain continues to reveal depths of incompetence, as Europe is under increasing pressure from illegal immigration. Government claims that they are tackling the issues will do little to reassure a worried public.

Migration has enriched many societies, but immigration and the growing cost to communities of accommodating large-scale inflows of people, in a now crowded world, raises many challenging questions. This is not a left or right issue or racist. It is about social and environmental sustainability.

Over 22,000 illegal immigrants have arrived in southern Italy alone in the first three months of 2014. Many more have entered Greece and Spain. Well over 100,000 African immigrants landed in the Spanish Canary Islands trying to gain access to the EU in the last few years. The EU and the media attempt to cloud the picture by calling them ‘irregular’ migrants and ‘undocumented workers’, but the growing consequences of these pressures will have profound impacts.

In 2010 the European Union's population topped half a billion. Of the 1.4 million growth from the previous year, 900,000 resulted from legal immigration alone into the EU. according to Eurostat in July 2010.

The number of foreign nationals given UK passports has soared. By 2050 the Government Actuary’s Department estimates the UK’s population could rise to 90 million, 70 per cent of this due to inward migration - enough to fill a major conurbation the size of Birmingham every five years in what is already the most densely populated country in Europe. Add to this, illegal immigration.

We now face a massive increase in population as our economy is struggling. Is this a sustainable policy supported by the environmental lobby? Is this a future we would vote for? We need to know but are still not being asked.

Displaying a mixture of complacency and incompetence the UK Government first lost control of the immigration and asylum system and then tried to spin the idea that large-scale immigration was vital to our economic interests. Growing evidence has shown this to be profoundly misleading.

What matters, not least to those in already vulnerable communities, is how immigration increases the number of people who are entitled to claim on the economy and the huge impact on infrastructure, schools, health, housing and the environment. The fact that the extra population cancels out any real benefit to the resident population was repeatedly denied until exposed by an investigation published in April 2008 by the Economic Affairs Committee of the House of Lords.

In the last five years, with high unemployment in some member countries, net migration from the whole of the EU rose to about 36 per cent of total net migration into the UK, says MigrationWatch, so nearly two-thirds is still from outside the EU. The eurosceptic press ignores this. But there is much Europe could do.

Illegal immigration pressure builds in Europe

Instability in North African countries has seen a big jump in illegals trying to get into Europe. National authorities in the EU apprehend more than 500,000 illegal migrants annually. In addition, there were 335,895 asylum claims in 2012, according to the EU Home Affairs Directorate.

Five amnesties have taken place in Italy since 1986, involving more than two million immigrants; four in Greece, four in Portugal since 1992 and three in Spain. These amnesties confirm that such strategies do not solve the long-term challenge of dealing with illegal migration.

Immigration has also had a major impact on Sweden and Norway, with their generous policies to would-be immigrants. Of nine million Swedes, roughly 1,080,000 are now foreign-born with around 900,000 children of immigrants. The city of Malmö’s population is almost 40 percent foreign, with high unemployment, social-welfare dependency and crime. Now the government wants to spread the burden, pushing other EU countries to take their share of this Swedish generosity.

Illegal migration into the EU from high-fertility countries that do not provide enough opportunities for their people presents a huge challenge. Lobby groups like the Refugee Council demand that Europe should just roll over and accommodate these continual pressures. Merely, negotiating how many each EU country should take.

Do the media and politicians seriously think that Europe can take in the populations of sub-Saharan Africa and beyond? When will the line be drawn? Most developed countries are already unsustainable in terms of resource use and the environment.

Using conflict situations to override border controls will only worsen this trend. This is a legitimate concern for millions of people, whatever their colour and background.

Once refugees and illegals are given leave to remain, most apply for citizenship and few go back to their country of origin. This can’t go on.

A global people-trafficking industry is running rings around the EU’s ‘human rights’ approach. The EU needs to send a clear message that illegals landing in Europe will simply be sent back to their county of origin within days, not be accommodated and then allowed to move around Europe.

Part of the problem is that EU countries don’t have repatriation agreements with many sender countries, but this could be remedied quite simply, as just about all the sender countries in Africa and many in Asia are recipients of generous Western aid. We need to tell them sign the agreement or aid will not be forthcoming.

Today, only Syria currently has an acute refugee crisis, but even here there is no need to give often large families permanent access to host countries, with follow up ‘family reunion’ leading to chain migration. They could simply be given temporary leave to remain while the situation settled and aid should primarily be targeted cost-benefit wise on refugee camps in neighboring countries

A bigger picture

Some people applaud Australia’s immigration system. They fail to say that Australia is letting in more immigrants each year than the country’s total annual net increase in the resident population. This, in an arid continent with only six per cent of the country suitable as arable land.

Similarly in Canada, where much of the country is too barren to support people, the Government is letting in over 260,000 immigrants a year – over twice the country’s annual net increase in births - and wants it to reach 330,000. Nearly 80 per cent of immigration in Canada is now linked to large-scale family reunion and an asylum backlog rather than primary skilled migration.

In the USA there are believed to be over 12 million illegals in the country and half a million illegal entries into the United States each year. (Pew Hispanic Center).

Ironically, Poland opened its doors to workers from outside the EU in an attempt to ease labour shortages, as it finds itself short of skilled workers because they're flocking to Britain.

Well over a million young people are not in education, work or training in the UK. Yet the Government more than doubled the number of work permits to non-EU immigrants since 1997 - despite the unprecedented influx of migrants from Eastern Europe who do not need permits. British workers wages are being depressed for employer profit, while taxpayers pick up the cost of low-wage welfare payments.

In some London boroughs, which now have immigrant majority populations of over 50 per cent, the proportion of immigrant origin school children is far higher, with potential social implications for increasing alienation and parallel societies, in conflict over cultural values. Official figures show one in every four babies born in Britain in 2009 was to a migrant mother – the rate in England and Wales was one in three.

A report by MigrationWatch (UK) in October 2010 says more than half a million school places will be needed over the next five years to meet future demand. The cost of the 550,000 extra school places will reach £40 billion over the five-year period and rise to £100 billion between now and 2020.

The UK’s Local Government Association warned that “Councils find it difficult to provide services for growing populations that are not recognised by the official statistics and for which they, therefore, receive no financial help” Yet the Government says it is scrapping the 10-year Census to save money.

Even the Conservatives’ pre-2010 election plan to allow 20,000 asylum seekers plus their dependents to come to Britain each year is equivalent to building a town the size of Truro in Cornwall or Godalming in Surrey every year. This is still environmentally unsustainable in a country as densely populated as Britain.

Crime hits us all, not least in vulnerable communities. Research by the International Centre for Prison Studies shows the percentage of foreign nationals in prison in 2012/2013 was 12.8 per cent for England and Wales, 34 per cent in Italy, 31 per cent Spain, 30 per cent Sweden, 44 per cent Belgium, in Austria 49 per cent, Greece 63 per cent and Switzerland 74 per cent - putting huge strain on our prison systems.

These are things we must face in our efforts to tackle existing inequalities in our society, not bury them in the politics of denial. We need more than ‘band aid’ campaigns and must focus real political will on tackling global environmental loss, bloody turf wars and religious feuds, overpopulation and under-employment that leads to poverty and despair.

The safety valve of migration is part of our collective history, but large-scale migration now raises vital social, environmental and economic questions about where the world is going and how we deliver reform and a better life for people wherever they are born. Like most of the key problems of the 21st Century, time to find solutions is running out.

By Brian McGavin, April 2014

"The geology of the region itself as well as its position as a geographical gateway to the Middle East, explains wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, confusing dialogues with Iran and, now, moves on Ukraine. I really wonder if Australian politicians actually realise what they are backing in the region." Sheila Newman (Evolutionary sociologist specialised in oil geopolitics.) ₁ This article summarises the initial Western misrepresentations and informs or reminds the historically educated reader of the history of this ancient petroleum-bearing region.

Anglophone press maintains depressingly low standard of reporting

The bias in Australian news reporting on Russia and the Ukraine is profoundly depressing. There is no responsible analysis of the role of the then 'opposition', with members now in parliament, and the use of snipers to fire at police and protesters alike in provoking President Yannukovych to temporarily leave the Ukraine. [Note I have removed the term 'resignation' because he has not resigned. I apologise for the confusion - Sheila Newman] ₂ There is no acknowledgement of how elected President Yannukovych formally requested Russia's help - or it is mentioned as if it were specious. Although there was an election due within a year, Yannukovych was forced to flee in peril of his life by the forces that put the current illegal government in place. There is no acknowledgement of the validity of a 97% Yes referendum in Crimea to join Russia.₃ There is no acknowledgement that Crimea already had separate administration within the Ukraine and that the great majority of its population identifies as Russian. There has been an over-emphasis on how a minority group of muslims said they had avoided voting and now complain that their needs were not met by the referendum and an underemphasis on how many voted and what they voted for. Little or no convincing evidence has been given for slurs implying that the referendum was either not legal or not well-managed. There is no acknowledgement of the reasonableness and democracy in calling a referendum, which is an example the increasingly undemocratic Anglophone West would do well to follow. There is hardly any mention in the Australian and other Anglophone press that the parliament of Acting President Oleksandr Turchynov, whom Obama greeted in the Whitehouse almost instantly ₄ and whose government Australia supports in East Ukraine, contains six members with severe fascist and Nazi affiliations, which kind of explains how the use of snipers was part of the campaign to get rid of the elected government. The increasing evidence of US and NATO aligned Western powers provoking the Kiev coup is not being covered in the Australian and other Western press. There is also no mention that President Yannukovych had offered to bring on early elections to give the opposition a chance to win government legally. There is a constant use of the adjective 'aggressive' to describe Russia's actions in going, on invitation, into a largely ethnic Russian Crimea which had voted to rejoin Russia, in a region where European power-grabs threaten hard-won agreements between the many diverse countries involved in recovering and transporting oil and gas out of the Caspian Sea area.

Oil and Gas in the Caspian region near Ukraine and Crimea

Most of all, there has been a glaring failure of Australian and US and other Anglophone news sources and governments to report that getting power over this region means getting power over major oil and gas reserves in the Caspian Sea and pipelines leading from its shared shores through several different countries with destinations as far as Britain ₅ and China. That is why dividing the Ukraine up between Western Europe and Russia is such a big deal.

The Caspian Sea: History, political borders, rights to mine etc.

The Caspian Sea is the largest inland sea. "Geographically, it is a salt-water inland sea or lake covering about 375,000 square kilometres, bordered by the Elburz Mountains of Iran to the south and the Caucasus to the northwest. The Volga River flows into it from the north, forming a large delta near Astrakhan, but evaporation is sufficient to counter the influx, leaving it some 30 meters below world sea level. It is flanked to the north by Russia itself, followed clockwise by Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Iran, and Azerbaijan. The three "-stans” gained independence following the fall of the Soviets in 1991. Dagestan and Chechnya, which are still Moslem provinces of Russia on the shores of the Caspian, are still seeking their independence, in a vicious campaign attended by many acts of terror. Under international law, ownership of the offshore mineral rights depends on whether it is deemed a lake or a sea. In the case of the lake, they belong jointly to the contiguous countries, whereas in the case of a sea they are divided up by median lines. The matter, which is no small issue, has yet to be fully resolved, but it seems in practice to be moving in the direction of the latter formula. It is worth noting here that Tehran, the capital of Iran, lies only 100km from the Caspian shore, so its role in the future of the region cannot be ignored." (Colin Campbell, "The Caspian Chimera," Chapter 5 in Sheila Newman, (Ed)., The Final Energy Crisis, 2nd Edition, Pluto Press, 2008."

Don't the Australian public deserve to know of the many geological reasons why this area is so politically fraught, instead of being subjected to incredibly superficial theories of ego and ethnicity, when any explanation is offered at all for territorial sensitivity in the region?

There is a fabulous and apocryphal geopolitical context to this vast oil and gas-bearing region that is the Middle East and Eastern Europe. Russia started the first pipeline there in the 1880s in Baku on the edge of the Caspian Sea, with a pipeline which carried kerosene a total of 835km to the Batumi, Georgia, a port on the Black Sea. It was the longest pipeline in the world at that time. Joseph Stalin actually led workers in the oil industry there.

"In the late 19th century Baku on the Caspian Sea was the site of a pipeline to the Black Sea, financed by Rothschild and Shell Oil. Joseph Stalin was a workers' leader there in an atrocious working environment. By the end of the Second World War, established easily accessible wells in the Caspian were less productive and, although the Soviet Union continued some new development there, including the building of off-shore platforms, it focused more on inland resources which did not require investment in offshore drilling equipment." (Colin Campbell, "The Caspian Chimera," Chapter 5 in Sheila Newman, (Ed)., The Final Energy Crisis, 2nd Edition, Pluto Press, 2008.)

Since the late 19th century this area has been the object of colonial exploitation and wars over its mineral wealth, with British and US exploration teams competing against each other and against Russia. President Trueman's duplicitous policies towards Russia and Ukraine are the subject of Oliver Stone's Untold History of the United States series (book and films). (See interview of Peter Kuznik, Oliver Stone's co-writer on this material here.) The political behaviour towards the region by the US between the First and Second World Wars was eerily similar to its behaviour today.

These geopolitical features have bred extremely tough political survival behaviour in associated royal and elected governments. The toughness is expressed in authoritarian government and sophisticated international relations with commercial organisations, international finance and international governments. Since the first oil shock in the early 1970s, the oil-exporting countries in this region have attempted to shrug off colonial rulers and assert independence. The political countershock from the West has been to fight those attempts. Gaddafi led the formation of OPEC which coordinated the policies of the oil-producing countries, with the aim of getting a steady income for its member states in return for secure supply of oil to oil importers. His efforts assisted independence amongst member oil-producing countries and a world price for oil. There was a brief period when it seemed that the West might respectfully integrate the leaders of those Eastern independence movements and the oil producing countries, but draw-down on world oil resources, through increased demand and finite supply, ever more expensively accessed, has coincided with escalating aggression on the part of the west. Russia and China, for their parts, are acting defensively to secure their geopolitical links with their neighbours.

Pipeline-linked countries vulnerable targets

Most important in the new problems with Syria and Ukraine and Crimea, is access to pipelines conveying oil and gas resources from the Caspian Sea region through surrounding countries, which have strategic power and risks. The absence of reporting on this crucial aspect of East-West hostilities in the Western media makes the Western powers and their media promoters and corporate supporters look guilty and the populations of Western countries look uneducated and incurious. Coverage from the Teheran Times and Russia Today is far more reality based.

"The recent U.S.-backed coup that toppled the former government in Ukraine has been couched in the noble rhetoric of democracy, humanitarian intervention and self-determination, but a closer examination reveals an ugly underside of realpolitik whose motive is energy dominance. Like Syria, Ukraine has one of the key gas pipeline corridors coveted by the U.S. and its NATO allies that is still under the influence of a so-called R&D (resistant and defiant) country such as Russia.

To understand what is happening in Ukraine and Syria, and how Qatar and Azerbaijan are involved, we must briefly look at regional energy developments following the dissolution of the former Soviet Union. While the Persian Gulf is well known for its abundant energy resources, the Caspian Sea Basin also has seen oil exploration and production since the early 1900s however the U.S. and the West had scant involvement there before the end of the Cold War. Since the breakup of the former Soviet Union, the United States and Russia have engaged in fierce competition to control the energy resources of the newly created Caspian Sea littoral states." Source: "The last Argument of Kings," Tehran Times, March 18, 2014 by stratagem, http://www.phantomreport.com/pipeline-predicament-the-ukraine-syria-russia-u-s-gas-nexus"

Importance of who supplies China with gas

Russia's impending new contract to supply its neighbour China with gas for the next 30 years could be one of the things that caused Western powers to make desperate efforts at this time to get control of the Ukraine in order to influence oil supply contracts in the region. (Gazprom negotiations).

Supplying China has been an important goal of competing powers in the region because whoever supplies China has a very powerful friend. Even though contemporary oil-exploration is done by commercial corporations, states vie to develop and maintain relations with these companies. This need to dominate oil-exploration companies is likewise a major reason for US interference in South American and African politics and for South American states to make friends with Russian, Chinese and African states and their geo-exploration companies. Western powers are trying to destroy these alliances by using their own alliances which include supporting Israeli annexation of territories, amassing of arms, and Saudi Arabian attempts to religiously colonise free Arab states, like Syria.

We should all be trying to get along and to plan to downsize world economy in line with dwindling fuel resources, but half the world is doing the opposite.

State Politics and Fossil Fuel Depletion

There is no doubt that the world's industrial powers are encountering increasing trouble accessing affordable fossil fuel resources. All the signs are there: war, loss of democracy, environmental suicide.

A few years ago, the United States began using huge quantities of explosive material in order to crudely reopen old mines and start new ones in situations which it had not pursued before because of their inherent danger, pollution and landscape costs.

It is naive to accept the spin that the US puts on fracking for shale-oil and gas, by which it implies that it now has abundant fuels to supply growth indefinitely. The reality is that the U.S. has to spend more barrels of oil to get shale oil and gas than were ever required to get oil from wells. The reason the US is going after shale-oil and gas is because most remaining crude oil reserves are now very hard to get to, due to their inaccessible geological position and due to international political competition for these scarce resources. And getting shale oil and gas costs more than energy; it costs democracy and it has the capacity to ruin any resilience in the economy. See "Fracking Democracy". People are protesting across the US at how the government is permitting shale-oil and gas mines to take over their farms. They are afraid of pollution (notably of water), subsidence, and the truly awful scale of mining which is transforming landscape and politics, as well as air, soil and water, with massive emissions of carbon gases. Fracking has been banned in France, although the US-influenced EU is trying to overturn this, as it has overturned French law on use of hormone-based pesticides like Roundup and genetically modified crops. The Western powers have also tried to interest the Ukraine in giving them fracking rights in the Ukraine.

Profligate petroleum users have no place in the 21st century

Unfortunately Australia is unwisely following the United States style on fossil fuel recovery. The EU, which tended to have more conservative, longer-view plans, is at risk of being dragged into the same profligate style due to the growing influence of a US-influenced banking system on the EU and the debts which this has already caused in European countries.

Australia, the United States, and Britain, have all exhausted their petroleum reserves by pursuing policies of economic and population growth in the face of common sense. They have also used an expensive and inefficient commercial approach to exploring for and mining petroleum at home and abroad. As oil geologist, Colin Campbell, put it, western oil-explorers "had to pretend that every borehole had a good chance of finding oil" [in order to attract investors], whereas their Soviet counterparts, "were very efficient explorers, as they were able to approach their task in a scientific manner, being able to drill holes to gather critical information" - which meant that, due to being state-financed, they didn't have to sink lots of unproductive and costly wells.

Colin Campbell describes the difficulties of oil and gas mining in the Caspian Sea, explaining how the countries of the region exploited oil resources that could be more conventionally mined. Much of the oil and gas reserves there are, not only under the sea, but deep under the sea-floor:

"In the years following World War II, they brought in the major producing provinces of the [Soviet] Union, finding most of the giant fields within them. Baku [on the Caspian Sea] was by now a mature province of secondary importance, although work continued to develop secondary prospects and begin to chase extensions offshore from platforms. The Soviet Union had ample onshore supplies, which meant that it had no particular incentive to invest in offshore drilling equipment. The Caspian itself was therefore largely left fallow, although the borderlands were thoroughly investigated. Of particular importance was the discovery of the Tengiz Field in 1979 in the prolific pre-Caspian basin of Kazakhstan, only some 70km from the shore. Silurian source-rocks had charged a carboniferous reef reservoir at a depth of about 4,500 meters beneath an effective seal of Permian salt. Initial estimates suggested a potential of about 6Gb, but the problem was that the oil has a sulphur content of as much as 16 per cent, calling for high-quality steel pipe and equipment, not then available to the Soviets. Development was accordingly postponed. The fall of the Soviet regime in 1991 opened the region to Western investment. " (Colin Campbell, "The Caspian Chimera," Chapter 5 in Sheila Newman, (Ed)., The Final Energy Crisis, 2nd Edition, Pluto Press, 2008.

A more cautious Soviet approach and the difficulty of access due to cold climate has meant that Russia has not used up all its oil and gas supplies. It has a good record of efficiency in the surrounding region. Due to the depletion of traditional oil reserves, the time has come when oil-exploration in these dangerous and icy regions nearby Russia will find finance.

Population policies and entitlement to fuel resources

We could go further and say that, as long as the Anglophone countries insist on growing their populations and their economies - which really means growing their need for energy resources and their output of pollution - and starting wars to fulfill these unwise policies of continued growth - they don't deserve what they are going after. We maybe should include India which, like Australia, as an ex-British colony, has all the problems of the Anglophone system where focused beneficiaries of population growth promote it in flagrant opposition to public opinion. The only obvious solution to the problem of finite resources can be to share remaining scarce resources equitably among polities which agree to stop engineering growth and demand upwards. That is a way to avoid continuing wars. In contrast to the rapid population growth in Anglophone countries and India, Russia's population is not growing fast and China has a responsible population policy.

Fracking and western sabre-rattling in this region

The reason for the civil war in Syria almost certainly lies in the growing desperation by the United States and Europe about maintaining large supplies of cheap oil, in competition with China and Russia, with Russia relatively well-situated geopolitically. The United States trumpets its successful recovery through fracking as a cover but, as explained above, anyone who knows anything about oil knows that fracking oil and gas costs far more oil and gas than earlier methods of retrieving oil and gas, but the industries and governments just aren't revealing how much.

The two inland seas, the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea are the sites of major oil and gas exploration, although concerted exploration of the Black Sea is only just beginning, and expectations are modest.₆ The reserves in the Caspian, however, are enormous, but the question is how much can ever be accessed and mined. These reserves are deep, dirty, dangerous and nearly inaccessible deposits laced with highly poisonous hydrogen sulphide, however they are sufficiently important for commercial and government exploration to have persevered, leading to the construction of extremely long pipe-lines to transport gas across multiple countries, from Baku, Azerbaijan to the Mediterranean coast of Turkey; from Baku via Russia to Novorossiysk on the Black Sea, thence to Western Europe. Accompanying the longest of these pipelines, the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan, which runs from Azerbaijan through Armenia and Turkey, to the South is Syria, Iraq and Iran, and, above them: Georgia, Russia and Ukraine, with Crimea just above Novorossiysk on the Black Sea. On the other side of the Black Sea is Ukraine, Romania and Bulgaria. On the other side of the Caspian Sea from the Russian side are Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan.

The recent coup against the legitimate Ukraine Government has meant that Russia now has to consider building a very expensive new pipeline around the top of the Ukraine to avoid new incursions into its territory bordering on the Caspian Sea.

You can see from the map, "Proposed and actual gas pipelines," (Source: Wikipedia commons circa 2007 but still useful) how difficult it would be for Europeans to impose economic sanctions on Russia, for Russia is an important supplier of gas to the rest of Europe. This is likely to cause a split between America, Saudi Arabia, Canada and Australia, which do not have this relationship with Russia. The United States has, however, recently begun exporting shale gas to Europe, creating an impression that it has huge supplies and hoping to reduce Russia's income from and power derived from supplying Europe in the short term.₇ In the mean time, it seems the US is actually having problems supplying its own needs:

"U.S. Natural Gas Inventories

Natural gas working inventories fell by 74 Bcf to 822 Bcf during the week ending March 28, 2014. Colder-than-normal temperatures and a few late-season winter storms during the month resulted in increased heating demand, prompting larger-than-normal withdrawals. Stocks are now 878 Bcf less than last year at this time and 992 Bcf less than the five-year (2009-13) average for this time of year. Total stocks, as well as stocks in all three regions, are currently less than their five-year (2009-13) minimums." Source: Energy Information Agency, (EIA), http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/steo/report/natgas.cfm?src=Natural-b1

NOTES

1. ⇑ Sheila Newman's research thesis for environmental sociology, "The Growth lobby in Australia and its Absence in France" (pdf - 100,000 words plus) , was about differences in the way that Australia and France adapted their population, housing and environmental policies after the first oil shock. It contains an historical comparison of pre-oil shock oil-economics in both countries. Later she was co-editor for the first edition of Andrew McKillop and Sheila Newman, The Final Energy Crisis, Pluto Press, UK, 2006; and sole editor for Sheila Newman (Ed. and Author), The Final Energy Crisis, 2nd Edition, Pluto Press, UK, 2008, which is a collection of her work plus scientific articles by nine scientists in disciplines ranging from particle physics through agriculture to environmental science and one economist. In 2013 she published, Demography, Territory, Law: The Rules of Animal and Human Populations, Countershock Press, 2013. [Paperback and Kindle.] The second in the Demography Territory Law series: Demography Territory Law 2: Land-tenure and the origins of Capitalism in Britain, is due for publication by June or July 2014 and asks whether the confluence of coal and iron in Britain caused its massive population growth, assisted it, or followed on from it, whether capitalism was inevitable and why it happened in Britain rather than elsewhere in Europe.

2. ⇑Ramazan Khalidov and Takeshi Hasegawa, "Ukraine Opposition Behind Snipers in Kiev According to a Leaked Phone Call, Modern Tokyo Times, March 6, 2014; "Recorded call reveals Ukraine opposition snipers, not Yanukovych, fired on protestors in Kiev," PR News Channel, March 6, 2014: "In the second leaked conversation regarding Ukraine in as many months, two top-level diplomats have been recorded discussing a potential bombshell in the crisis in Ukraine.

According to The Guardian, the 11-minute conversation between EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton and Estonian foreign minister Urmas Paet details new allegations that the snipers who killed protestors in the Ukrainian capital were not agents of former president Viktor Yanukovych, but rather agents of the opposition forces.

"There is now stronger and stronger understanding that behind the snipers, it was not Yanukovych, but it was somebody from the new coalition,” Paet said during the conversation. [...] "Following the declaration, Paet went on to mention that the new Ukrainian government has heard the evidence, yet has shown no interest in investigating the claims.[...]"

3. ⇑ Mark Byrnes, "Crimea's Controversial Election Day," The Atlantic Cities, March 17, 2014.

4. ⇑ http://www.platts.com/latest-news/natural-gas/moscow/gazprom-says-expects-to-sign-gas-supply-deal-26644803 Matt Vasilogambros and Marina Koren, "White House: In Meeting With Obama, Ukraine's Prime Minister Embraces the West"National Journal.

5. ⇑ The Nord Stream gas pipeline takes gas to Germany, from where it is transported to Britain and other countries. I am not clear as to whether there are still plans to continue the pipeline underwater to Britain.

6. ⇑ The Black Sea has nothing comparable to the proven reserves in the Caspian Sea, but the need to find oil and gas is becoming so pressing that companies have taken out exploration licences for gas reserves they would previously not have bothered with. The Skifska natural gas field located on the continental shelf of the Black Sea was discovered in 2012 and there are other promising deposits offshore from Ukraine. "At the helm of the new energy diplomacy effort is Carlos Pascual, a former American ambassador to Ukraine, who leads the State Department’s Bureau of Energy Resources. The 85-person bureau was created in late 2011 by Hillary Rodham Clinton, the secretary of state at the time, for the purpose of channeling the domestic energy boom into a geopolitical tool to advance American interests around the world."
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/06/world/europe/us-seeks-to-reduce-ukraines-reliance-on-russia-for-natural-gas.html?_r=0

7. ⇑ See Gail Tyverborg, "The Absurdity of US Natural Gas Exports", March 31, 2014, http://ourfiniteworld.com/

Putin's annual Q&A session 2014 (FULL VIDEO)

Speakers: Jenny Warfe (Blue Wedges); Jenny Lowe (BirdLife); Dave Minton, Port of Hastings Development Authorities; Simon Brannigan, VNPA Marine spokesperson; Hugh Kirkman, Marine Environmental Consultant. Starts 5.45, Tuesday 15 April, Hastings Community Hub, 1973 Frankston-Flinders Rd, Hastings (booking essential) Westernport Bay is a site of international significance for aquatic birds and right on the doorstep of Melbourne. Its extensive intertidal mudflats, seagrass meadows, saltmarshes and mangroves support more than 10,000 migratory
shorebirds and 10,000 waterfowl. Yet despite its incredible importance as a bird sanctuary the Napthine Government plans to drastically expand Port of Hastings within the bay into an international container port - oil spills, dredging, land clearing, and thousands of more ships a year could put Westernport’s birdlife and habitats at risk.

This interesting and informative seminar will explore the potential impacts the port expansion could have on seagrass, saltmarsh and mangroves as well as on the bay’s many bird species.

Speakers include

• A representative from Birdlife Australia.

• Dr Hugh Kirkman, environmental consultant and seagrass expert.

• Representatives from the Victorian National Parks Association, Blue Wedges Coalition and the Westernport & Peninsula Protection Council.

WHERE: Hastings Community Hub, 1973 Frankston- Flinders Rd, Hastings (Google Map
Reference http://goo.gl/TVUtML).

WHEN: Tuesday 15 April.

TIME:Doors open 5.45pm, 6.10 start, finishes 7.30pm.

RSVP:This is a free event, tea and coffee provided, but bookings are essential through Eventbrite – vnpa.eventbrite.com.au where you are asked to click on a free booking to attend button.

The Australian Minister for Future Planning, Mrs Jaqueline Crapaud is interviewed here by Prudence Reilly on the Sustainable Victoria Show. The Minister explains Australia's immigration policy of attracting billionaires, the privatisation policy and how this will apply to Tasmania, ports and the Sydney Opera House, and she elaborates a new Tax-Player plan which will pay sporadic bonuses and where client-citizens will register with the ACCC as private companies. She also explores the fate of Generation X. The production is 25 minutes long and highly educational.

Experimental costumed reading of The Minister for Future Planning, subtitled, Is Australia for Sale, by Jill Quirk and Sheila Newman. This satire on Australian growth lobby economics, written several years ago (2005) shows remarkable predictive capacity. If these predictions remain on course our future is blood-chilling. Reading done in front of static camcorder due to improvised situation. The video ratio reflects the date of the production. This comedy was written in 2006 and models, with some exaggeration, what is actually happening in Australia as regards immigration policy, economic policy and rights of citizens. Quirk and Newman are looking for other people to act and film this dialogue or part of it. Please contact them on [email protected]. The script is available for any others who might like to produce this or assist a new production. Please put your feedback here in the form of comments.

This article takes a quick look at some of Australia's sources of revenue and the costs of supporting our growing population. The numbers are frightening.

The mining industry:

• Coal generated ballpark $47.9 billion in export income in 2011-2012
• This was roughly 15% of total export earnings that year
• 5 year trend growth in the coal industry to 2011-2012 was a whopping 16.3%
• This trend growth in coal means production is currently doubling roughly every 20 years. The same applies for Natural Gas (roughly 4% of export earnings in 2011-2012). Iron ore production and export income (roughly 20% of export earnings) is doubling about every 10 years and grew over 30% in the last five years
• Yet despite this massive, unsustainable(?), escalation of mineral exports, Government debt is also escalating
• It is clear that something is wrong
• Australia's population has grown by 3.5 million (a whopping 18%) in just a decade. These extra people demanded $56 billion in additional expenditure from the budget in 2011-2012 (Ref: pro-rated annual budget expenditure divided by number of people in 2011-2012)
• The per capita cost of this budget expenditure has been growing at a compound annual rate of over 6% for the last decade while GDP per capita has been growing at under 1% per annum
• The coal industry generates approx. $4 to $6 billion in annual tax revenues. Imagine this entire industry generating only 10% of the revenue required to support 3.5 million people who didn't even exist (in Australia) a decade ago
• The workforce both directly and indirectly employed in the coal industry is ballpark 140,000; or only about 1% of the Australian workforce
• The total agriculture, forestry, fishing and mining workforce is only about 5% of the Australian workforce; which is less than the number of unemployed people. This small workforce generates over 40% of total export income

The Government has 5 year trend growth in debt of $39 billion annually. This is over 10% of annual taxation revenue.

What can we conclude from this brief, simple snapshot of information about export earnings, population growth and the structure of Australia's economy? If you ask an Economist you'll probably be told that we need to grow faster! Grow what faster?

This data is telling us that "Australia requires a public inquiry to determine a basis for the optimum rate of population growth". There is no evidence in the public domain confirming that Government is dealing with this issue coherently. Population growth is clearly a driving force behind the growing annual Government Budget and the dilution of GDP growth amongst ever more people.

The trend growths in Budget per capita and GDP per capita; if maintained for the next 25 years as they have been for the last 10; would grow annual Budget expenditure to roughly the same size as GDP. This will presumably turn Australia into an economic basket case.

It is clear that population growth may be costing more than it generates in GDP growth; and also causes significant negative social, environmental and infrastructure inadequacy outcomes that Government does not quantify in the annual Budget.

Please review and consider signing this petition and forwarding it to as many people as possible: Australia requires a public inquiry to determine a basis for the optimum rate of population growth

Thank you. See the attachments for more disturbing statistics.

Economists advising Politicians on nation building are like the blind leading the blind. Historical facts prove that Australia's economy is managed by targeting consistent rates of extreme GDP growth. Let's define the facts before we review this problem. Economists and politicians apparently don't do this.

Facts

• Australian GDP growth has averaged roughly 3.2% per annum since 1901 and has been relatively steady for the last 30 years
• Australian population growth has averaged roughly 1.6% per annum since 1901 and has been relatively steady for the last 30 years
• GDP growth per capita has averaged around 1.032/1.016 = 1.6% per person per annum since 1901.
• Australia's annual population growth was roughly 4 times the OECD country average in 2012 due to a longstanding policy of mass migration
• GDP is defined as the final market value of all goods and services produced in the Australian economy over a given period of time, and is the main measure of economic growth in the economy. This totally ignores what Economists call Externalities. Engineers call these Unknowns. If an Unknown is essential for design, the design cannot proceed
• A recession is a period of temporary economic decline during which trade and industrial activity are reduced, generally identified by a fall in GDP in two successive quarters
• Therefore if GDP growth is stabilised at a lower rate of 1.6% per annum instead of 3.2% per annum, trade and industrial activity could be stabilised at a lower rate of expansion without causing a recession
• This is analogous to a truck driving down a road. If it's travelling at 3.2%, slamming the brakes on is analogous to a recession. The faster you're travelling the harder it is to slow down, and the more wear and tear on the truck. Speed amplifies volatility. Volatility is difficult to manage when it causes impacts like rapid rises in unemployment, etc.............



Externalities

What Economists can't cope with is Externalities. These can be defined as:

• A consequence of an industrial or commercial activity which affects other parties without this being reflected in market prices, such as the pollination of surrounding crops by bees kept for honey.
• The cost or benefit that affects a party who did not choose to incur that cost or benefit.
• Neoclassical welfare Economics asserts that, under plausible conditions, the existence of Externalities will result in outcomes that are not socially optimal. Those who suffer from external costs do so involuntarily, whereas those who enjoy external benefits do so at no cost

From an Engineering perspective, growth of the world economy over the last 100 years using Economic criteria that virtually ignores Social and Environmental Externalities (ie the adverse consequences of growth) is analogous to an Engineer designing a building and calling the strength of the concrete an Externality. It's like advising that the design is OK, but we don't know whether the building will collapse - and we don't really care. So why is it that Politicians take the advice of Economists? Well you might ask. Are they both grossly negligent or do they have an excuse? "GROSS NEGLIGENCE. Lata culpa, or, as the Roman lawyers most accurately call it, dolo proxima, is, in practice, considered as equivalent to dolus or fraud itself, and consists, according to the best interpreters, in the omission of that care which even inattentive and thoughtless men never fail to take of their own property."

Carbon tax

In the recent past we've seen half-cocked Economic plans for a Carbon Tax. This is an attempt to deal with the single Externality of global warming. But what about all the other Externalities that have never been addressed? Why not deal with the root cause of most of them?

In Australia a root cause (ie the weak concrete) of ALL negative social and environmental Externalities is extreme population growth, and this is clearly being used by Australian politicians to drive extreme GDP growth. If population growth was zero, the negative Externalities directly due to population growth would be eliminated and the remaining Externalities would be related to HOW the stabilised population behaves. This is like stopping the construction of any more buildings with the wrong concrete and focussing on repairing what we already have.

Who would you trust to design a building; a Politician, an Economist; or an Engineer - whose objectives include using the right concrete?

Need for coherent plan, public inquiry, petition

We have a Nation to Renovate. We need the vision, and the common sense, to question the status quo.

It is clear that neither Politicians nor Economists can draw this conclusion and prefer business as usual - The Ostrich Mentality. Externalities like the consequences of extreme population growth don't even get a mention in public policy debate with politicians.

We need a Public Inquiry to determine the optimum rate of population growth using terms of reference that have never been used before.

We need to all print copies of the link to the petition, go from door to door to ask people to sign, or simply put the link into their letter boxes with your own explanation of why they should sign.

Please help with this:
Australia requires a public inquiry to determine a basis for the optimum rate of population growth