Talk of 'population policy', of meeting population targets, or using immigration to achieve particular growth goals conceals a much larger problem and moral issue. Furthermore, it allows people who promote such policies, or who accept them for personal benefit, to wash their hands of the moral implications that such policy has. Generally, these questions of population are seen as simply matters of numbers and resources, and it is definitely true that there are issues of numbers, space and resource management behind these. But behind all this is a larger issue, one obvious when seen, but rarely pointed out. The very acceptance of the idea that a 'population policy', or any policy or idea to that effect being implemented for economic or growth purposes creates a moral dilemma. To accept this as valid governance is to reject another idea, that of a people having the right to self determination and self preservation. That growth, or lack thereof of a nation is determined by peoples individual reproductive choices.
In the article the writer questions the whole idea of governments making top-down decisions about the size of a country's population.
A Patriot's Act is a legal novel by lawyer Kenneth Eades, exploring the impact of Bush's terror laws, based on case histories. In a legal investigation and then a trial, we see how US administrations redefined torture in the light of 'terrorism' and we learn what that could mean to an individual. This clear but sophisticated story dramatises what has been sacrificed for 'safety' and how much less safe it really makes us. This article by the author of the book, gives a history of how we got from there to here. Although the author writes about the United States, Australia has aped that country with its own terror laws. 
The plain truth: 
I don’t have kids but I am disturbed about the Heart Foundation’s Active Healthy Kids very poor report card for Australian children last week. It said that Australian children are largely unfit because of a lack of exercise and that this deterioration has happened in the last couple of decades. Natasha Schranz author of the Foundation's inaugural report has graded Australian children at a disgraceful D minus. Contributing to this terrble score was a D for "active transport", meaning not nearly enough walking or bicycle riding to and from school.
All over the world right wing 'think tanks' will be commemorating the work of economist Ronald Coase, who died on the second of September this year (2013) at the age of 102. Unfortunately his work has been used as an excuse to marginalise civil and human rights by making it legally acceptable for the interests of big business and the wealthy to over-rule everyone else’s financial, social and environmental interests. Coase's work is largely responsible for many of the problems of democracy, overpopulation and overdevelopment that are ruining more and more peoples' lives and freedom today. Many of its lesser supporters are naive followers of fashion and don't really understand what they are losing through their innocent embrace of 'efficiency' any more, perhaps, than did the followers of Chairman Mao's 'Great Leap Forward'. (This article is based on an extract from Sheila Newman's forthcoming book, Demography, Territory, Law 2: Land-tenure and the Origins of Capitalism in Britain, Countershock Press, probably early 2014.)
The author of the article suggests that the rule of law and federalism are no longer operating in Australia. As a result of three decades of Australian governments enthusiastically embracing neo-liberal capitalist policies, power is now concentrated at the central level. Government captured by the few: the two major parties in collusion with big business nationally and internationally. With no indication from the Australian people that they seek the radical systemic reforms required to reinstate federalism and reclaim a fairer and more just society, only small steps towards reform appear realistic. The revision of the Preamble to the Constitution as a precursor to further constitutional change and the reassertion of state powers supporting of local power are suggested as first steps. 
This article contains James Sinnamon's submission to the 
Australians have found it very hard to protest against high immigration because of constant subtle messages from government and media implying that they had no right to object. They have been given the idea that there was nothing special about them that gave them the right to object. They only lived here. Although only Australians might vote in governments, the importance of this was subsumed to a cult of plutocracy, where governments prioritised commercial and corporate demands over the wishes of the actual electorate. The mainstream press (the ABC, the Murdoch Press, the Fairfax Press) promoted a cult of elite authoritarianism and the official alternative press never really encouraged questioning of this process on issues of real dissent. And the elite authorities all endorsed 'multiculturalism'.
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