Mark O'Connor

I spent some hours on the US side of the wall near San Diego one night in the early 1990s. (Yes there has been a wall there since at least Kennedy’s time.) Crossing the wall was essentially a nighttime activity, but the “Mexicans” (they may have been mostly Mexicans going backwards and forwards between family in Mexico and illegal jobs they had in the USA) seemed to have ladders permanently against the wall on their side. Their heads appeared over the wall well before dark, sometimes waving cockily. After dark the border force vehicles cruised up and down on a road on the US side about 200 metres (in most places) from the wall, trying to guess where the “rushes” would come. Tourists sometimes came to see this nightly game.

Australian Dick Smith, techie, environmentalist who founded National Geographic, and millionaire, has recently attempted to educate Australians about the wealthy population growth lobby in their country, which benefits from Australia's rapid immigration-fueled population growth whilst the rest of us pay the cost. To do this, he has run his own expensive campaing, including taking out expensive ads in newspapers. Among other things, Smith has decribed Australia's public media, the ABC, as biased in its failure to fairly report the costs of population growth. We on candobetter.net cannot help but be impressed at his community spirit. Are Dick Smith’s ads having an effect on population reporting further afield? Maybe. Here's an example of what we hope may be a new trend in truthful reporting on the matter by the ABC.

Tonight (11 September 2017) the ABC’s Media Watch program contained a section in which presenter (Paul Barry) attacked Dick Smith’s views on population and specifically Dick Smith’s complaints about the ABC’s refusal to cover the issue of Australia’s rampant population growth. Yet for much of the time he did not defend the ABC. He did not answer points Dick Smith makes at https://www.dicksmithfairgo.com.au/abc-tv-news-current-affairs-bias-growth/or that William Lines and I have made at https://www.dicksmithfairgo.com.au/abc-bias-chapter-overloading-australia/ about ABC bias. Instead, Paul Barry seemed more interested in attacking Dick Smith. [Mark O'Connor is a well known Australian poet and co-author with Bill Lines of Overloading Australia.]

Mark O'Connor, co-author of Overloading Australia talks on population fallacies and the IPAT equation and touches on Greens politics at the Sustainable Living Festival in a Sustainable Population Australia event.

Sunday 14 Feb 2016 at 12-12.30pm: Mark Allen of Population Permaculture and Planning asks: Is it possible to accommodate a growing population without unacceptably high density living and urban sprawl? If so, what rate of population growth should we be looking at and what types of community should we be creating? This workshop discusses the merits of village style living in combination with permaculture principles and asks the question, where do we go from here?

Sunday 14 Feb 2016 at 12.30-1pm: Mark O’Connor, co-author of Overloading Australia, will look at why environmentalism is almost meaningless when there is no plan to limit growth of population, why this issue is often ignored, and what a better form of environmentalism could and should do. What are humane and practical ways to limit Australia’s and the world’s population? (Sustainable Population Australia - Victorian Branch (SPA Victoria) organised this event.)

Is Environmentalism in Denial? [For details of this debate, see http://www.slf.org.au/festival14/environmentalism-denial ] Inside, Mark O'Connor's speech.

This article Oz Population Growth Lunacy is a nice example of the scrambled head-space of some journalists. Yes, Monica Attard (ex ABC, now working for the Hoopla website) can see David Attenborough's point that population growth can't go on for ever,and she can even see that "It’s hard to fathom how governments (all levels of them) can act fast and smart enough to ease the congestion we are seeing in the major cities across Australia, the spiraling cost of housing and an environment which looks stressed."

Mark O'Connor is running for the federal Australian Senate as a candidate of the Stable Population Party Australia (SPPA).

Mark O'Connor (famous co-author of Overloading Australia) asks, should environmentalists resist Big Australia - and the densification of Melbourne? "In the long run, unless we can stop the endless growth of population and consumption, all environmental battles will be lost. Yet powerful vested interests distort our news and media to make us think growth is inevitable, and that we should live in ever more crowded cities. Mark O'Connor discusses how environmentalists can identify and defeat these forces." Feb 17th 2012 Sustainable Living Festival, 4 pm Look for the Sustainable Population Australia (Victorian Branch) stall there as well - all weekend and Friday.

The media is so full of the ghastly propaganda for population growth by our government, its ministers and the same old academics who play to big business, that we thought we would bring you some exerpts from The World Today, but edited to highlight the anti-growth lobby's contribution. Enjoy.

On Tuesday 25 May Mark O'Connor and Bernard Salt debated Australia’s population options at the “Future Summit”, run by the Australian DAVOS Connection (ADC) at the Hyatt in Melbourne. It was a one-hour debate, moderated by Jane-Frances Kelly of the Grattan Institute, before an audience mainly of business people. Organizers were surprised by the numbers this session attracted.

SPA, Dick Smith, Kelvin Thomson have combined to produce simultaneous population reform speak-out breakfasts in all mainland states of Australia tomorrow morning. We believe that the event was inspired by the Global Population Speak outs.

Report on the Federation Square (Victoria, Australia) Population Forum on 23 April 2010, where Mark O'Connor debated Marcus Spiller.

The mainstream press is full of growth lobbyists trying to hose down arguments against population growth, but they don't really have any arguments - except narrow self-interest, which is costly for the rest of us, which they can't really afford to admit. Meanwhile ordinary Australians are reporting their many soundly based objections to population growth on the internet, since the mainstream press would rather not print or report these in depth or much at all.

And the new message from the growth lobby is ..... "Yes, we hear your pain and we understand absolutely. No we don't intend to take any notice of your protests." Analysis of ex-ANZ bank economist, Saul Eslake's article, "Populate and Stagnate." in the Fairfax Press (The Age)

The Australian has run yet another beat-up by KPMG corporate partner, Bernard Salt, trying desperately to justify continued high immigration. Mark O'Connor, author of Overloading Australia comments.

Film[Click on picture]: Writer and environmentalist, Mark O'Connor says that this is the first time since the mid 1990s that the ABC has interviewed someone from Sustainable Population Australia for the environmental view on population problems in Australia. I can't wait for them to interview someone from Candobetter.org. In the mean time: See also poll in The Age: "Suburban sprawl: Is a pause in extending Melbourne's boundary a good thing?" (Obviously the answer is "Yes"). See also "Madden Backflip on outer urban expansion" link inside.

Those continuing to impose record high immigration on Australia insist that it is in our own best economic self-interest. At the same time, they attempt to depict opposition to high immigration as selfish. In a paper written in 1996, Mark O'Connor dissects such self-contradictions in their political philosphy and offers an explanation for its origins.

Originally published as "Where Does the PC Line on Immigration Come From?" as a pdf document (33K) 1997-98 issue of The Social Contract journal.
See also: Forum discussion on Andrew Bartlett's blog in response to this article commencing 5 Nov 09, "Population is destiny" editorial in the Australian of 19 Sep 09, Population boom 'a recipe for tragedy' in News Ltd Online of 18 Sep 09, "35 million Australians? Start preparing now" editorial in the SMH of 18 Sep 09.

"A nice example of the Replacement Rate Fallacy," writes Mark O'Connor, of Barry Maley's demographic dogma in "Birth Rate Bubble". (ABC Radio's Unleashed)Maley claims that, "Any nation needs to have a birth rate of not less than 2.1 children per woman to maintain its population." "Humans are not fruitflies where the generation of parents dies as their offspring are born," laughs O'Connor. "For instance, if India achieved so-called “replacement fertility” now, with all its couples in future averaging just 2.05 children, its population would ... double, adding an extra 1 billion people!"

Nothing is more vital to the survival of human populations than an abundant flow of cheap energy. Most well-informed persons are vaguely aware that oil and gas supplies are peaking or have now peaked; yet there are still government departments and many news media that would prefer to know and think about this as little as possible.

First published in People and Place magazine Volume 17 No 2 of 2009. See also: Final Energy Crisis blogs, Mark O'Connor's web site, australianpoet.com, review of Mark O'Connor's Overloading Australia.

In his review of "Overloading Australia" by Mark O'Connor and William Lines, Frosty Wooldridge author of America on the brink who has cycled 100,000 miles across six continents in the past 25 years, refutes commonly held misconceptions that the Australian continent is underpopulated.

Also published on Australia.to News and in American Chronicle as part 1 and part 2.
See also: www.frostywooldridge.com.

Australian Poet Mark O'Connor, author of Overloading Australia, describes in a talk given back in 1993 the various dishonest debating ploys used by immigration advocates.

See also: Immigrationism, Racism And Moral Monopoly (pdf 27K) from Winter 1993-1994 edition of The Social Contract.

"To keep stable and just replace itself, a relatively young population like Australia’s would currently need something even lower than Western Europe’s rate of around 1.3 children per completed family. More like 0.93. And that’s without immigration!"

Australian poet and writer Mark O’Connor reveals astounding similarities between the dire ecological problems faced by both Canada and Australia.