environment

Labor MP David Bradbury must correct error riddled conservation funding announcement (NSW), says Geoff Brown, Stable Population Party candidate. Mr Brown, who is a New South Wales natural conservation activist, has long fought to retain Cumberland plain woodland against attempts by governments to allow it to be destroyed for massive suburban developments. He believes now that the ALP has tried to take credit for his concept of the Cumberland Conservation Corridor. Geoff is running as a candidate for the Stable Population Party.

Mark Butler, the Federal Environment Minister, and David Bradbury, Labor member for Lindsay and the Assistant Treasurer, have been called on by Geoff Brown, the Stable Population Party candidate for Lindsay, to set the voters of Lindsay straight, after Lindsay's leading local newspaper, the Penrith Press, printed a half page story riddled with errors and misinformation about Labors 2010 federal election commitment of $7.5 million towards the establishment of the Cumberland Conservation Corridor.

Geoff Brown, also the President of the Western Sydney Conservation Alliance, developed the concept for the Cumberland Conservation Corridor in 2005, and at the 2010 election ran as an Independent using preference negotiations with Labor and Liberal to extract the $7.5 million deal from Labor. So he is on top of this issue. Several articles published by candobetter.net show his record on this matter. See Cumberland plain woodland and Geoff Brown.

Brown described himself as "livid" when he read the Penrith Press article which erroneously stated that Labor had announced $7.5m towards establishing the Cumberland Conservation Corridor. He said the article made it look as if Labor had just made some new 2013 committment. He said the voters of Linsay would be confused.

"The story should have been about why it took 3 years to fulfill their 2010 commitment. The article was littered with errors based on the dubious media release put out by David Bradbury and Mark Butler. If not corrected it will let Labor off the hook in Lindsay from announcing any new local conservation funding outcomes for the 2013 election. Labor may try to fudge their way out of it”.

Geoff Brown called on David Bradbury and Mark Butler to front the voters of Lindsay and tell them:

" - That neither Labor nor Liberals have yet promised any new conservation money in Lindsay for the 2013 election
- The announcement cited by the Penrith Press was from the 2010 election and it took 3 years to cobble together an outcome
- The Mulgoa biobanking site stays in private ownership so will not become part of the publicly owned Mulgoa Nature Reserve. So no net public benefit or use for education
- The Mulgoa site was never at threat of development and was already protected under Penrith Councils LEP which zones it E2 Environmental Conservation (I argued that money be better spent trying to conserve bushland in Penriths north at risk of development)
- That nearly half of the $7.5 million was spent on land care projects that are outside the Lindsay electorate and nowhere near the proposed Cumberland Conservation Corridor. Projects such as those in the Blue Mountains and the Cranebrook wetland project are not anywhere near the CCC
- That $3.4 million funding for weed removal and the planting trees is exactly what Tony Abbott proposes with his Green Army and Direct Action policy. This outcome condones the Liberals policy
- That 2000 ha of local bush land has not been protected (David’s MR and his letterbox propaganda claims he has saved 2000 ha of local bush land. He is claiming to have protected the 558 ha Airservices Australia land at Shanes Park and 1300 ha of bush at the Orchard Hillls Defence Establishment. These sites are not formally protected. Shanes Park has the proposed Castlereagh Freeway running through it)
- That biobanking is a scheme whereby there is a net loss of habitat. Bushland gets bulldozed with developers offsetting that clearing by funding the management of bushland elsewhere. In this case the State funding came from the clearing of critically endangered bushland in the Sydney Growth Centres. It is a highly dubious method of conserving nature.
- That the land owner is not raising his income from selling the biobanking credits. He gets a guaranteed $6.6 million as the joint Federal and State funding has already purchased the credits."

Labor caught out moving the fence posts

Geoff Brown added that Labor has been caught out trying to change the location of the Cumberland Conservation Corridor. As an example he cited the wetlands at Cranebrook near the Waterside housing estate as being 'nowhere near' the CCC.”

Mr Brown says that Lindsay voters need to be aware that Labor has not yet committed any new money towards conserving bushland within the Cumberland Conservation Corridor.

Mr Brown met last week with Mark Butler and David Bradbury calling on them to fund the protection of 1500 ha of Priority Conservation Land north of the ADI Site that is threatened. He says that the 50 ha of Mulgoa land was already zoned for protection but this 1500 ha of bushland has no such conservation zoning.

In his opinion, the only way it will be zoned for conservation by Penrith Council is if there is money on the table to buy it.

"The voters of Lindsay need to join with the Stable Population Party in calling on Labor and Liberal to commit to protecting this land.”

A better, not a bigger Australia

Mr Brown concluded by saying that to his knowledge, the Stable Population Party is the only minor political party in Lindsay actively lobbying Labor and Liberal about protecting the environment and limiting more urban sprawl and traffic congestion. He said that voters could rest assured that the Stable Population Party stands for a better not a bigger Australia.

A New South Wales lawyer, Philip Howell, has written a brilliant new democratic strategy to decide from the local level upwards, how big we the people want Australia's population to be. As a population sociologist who compares international systems on this matter, I am really impressed and can only encourage everyone to support this man's remarkable contribution to our democracy and wellbeing. Look at his site for more detail on reforming our constitution.

The original site, along with the reasons for the proposal is to be found here: The We Will Decide Proposal

This section describes how the proposal will operate in practice. Further details are provided in the Explanatory Notes.

The Purpose

1. The aims of the We Will Decide proposal are:
- To give people control over the population density in their residential area, by preventing development in that area which would allow the population to grow by more than the people want. People have a legitimate self-interest in controlling the scale of development in their local area.
- To provide a connection between the number of migrants and the preference of the people for more or fewer people in their area. The number of migrants permitted to enter the country in Australia’s self-interest will be restricted by reference to the total of the local decisions made by people about the population in their area.
- To continue to allow the Commonwealth Government to determine the number of migrants permitted to enter the country pursuant to our international obligations.

The Process

2. In the online census form for 2016, any respondent whose answers confirm that he or she:
- Is over 18; and
- Has a usual residence;
will be asked a new question, namely:
‘Would you like to comment on how many people should live in your area?’
Where an online form is submitted for more than one respondent - for example all members of a household - each person submitting the form who is above the age of 18 will be asked the new question. A negative answer to the question would be recorded, and the respondent would continue on with the census form. An affirmative answer to the question would generate a unique code linking each individual respondent with the Statistical Area Level 1 (“SA1") in which his or her usual place of residence is situated.

3. Each respondent would have 14 days to log in to the ABS’s We Will Decide website using the unique code. On logging in, the respondent would be presented in sequence with 3 screens:

Screen 1 will describe what the respondent will be asked to do. View the text of the screen here: Screen 1.

Screen 2 will display a map of the area about which the respondent will be asked to make a decision. It will be based on the Statistical Area Level 1 (SA1) in which the respondent’s usual residence is located. The size of the area will depend on whether the respondent’s SA1 is classed as urban or rural by the Bureau of Statistics. In summary:
- Those living in residential areas classed as urban, or in commercial areas, will decide in relation to an area comprising their own SA1 and each adjoining SA1 which is in the same Statistical Area Level 2 (SA2).
- Those living in areas classed as rural will decide only in relation to their own SA1.
The reason these areas have been selected is explained here: Determining the Area. The text of the screen may be viewed here: Screen 2.

Screen 3 will allow the respondent’s decision to be recorded. It will show the area’s present population and ask the respondent to select a percentage change between negative 2.0% and positive 2.0% which represents the respondent’s preference for the rate of increase or decrease in that area’s population over the next five years. The selection will be made by from radio buttons or check boxes on a number line, divided at intervals of at least 0.2. (Intervals of 0.1 would be better, but may not fit easily across smaller screens.) The text of the screen is here: Screen 3. Note that the respondent is shown rates of change per year and asked to decide on an annual rate of increase or decrease.

The Results

4. Locally: Results of the people’s decision as to the level of any increase or decrease will be calculated separately for each SA1 across the country. The calculation will be made as follows:
- The response from each respondent who makes a decision about an SA1 will be recorded as a decimal number; for example, an increase of 0.2% will be recorded as plus 0.2, and a decrease of 1.5% will be recorded as minus 1.5.
- All responses will then be added.
- The total will then be divided by the number of responses.
- The result will be a decimal number between minus 2.0 and plus 2.0.
This number will express the rate of population change per year which people living in that area wish to occur throughout the next five years. This will be the People’s Decision at a Local Level.

5. Nationally: The percentage change decided for each area at the Local Level will be applied to the current population of that area to determine the numerical increase or decrease preferred in that area. The country-wide total of those local numerical increases or decreases will be the Peoples’ Decision as to the extent to which Australia’s population should increase, decrease or stay the same.

Using the Results

6. Locally: The impact of the Peoples’ Decision at Local Level will vary depending on the area under consideration. In general, the intention is that development which would permit the population of residential areas to change contrary to the wishes of the people in that area would be prohibited. To ensure some flexibility, this would be implemented as follows:
- In areas classed as residential, more intense residential development would be prevented if its effect would be to increase the population by more than permitted by the people’s decision. Extensions to existing dwellings, or their replacement with larger dwellings would not be classed as ‘more intense’, but any development of dual occupancies, villas or flats in place of a lower density dwelling form would generally be prevented, unless the development did not increase the overall population in the area. Proposals for less intense development could use the people’s decision as a reason why the development should be approved.
This prohibition could be subject to a proviso. If fewer than 10% of the people in an area participated in the We Will Decide process, the prohibition would not take effect. The decision of those who responded could be treated in the same way as for non-residential areas.
- Some people live in areas classed as commercial, industrial or rural. In such non-residential areas, the people’s decision would not be binding on Government. It would merely be another factor which could be taken into account when development applications are considered.
This would permit Governments to change commercial, industrial and rural areas to residential, or to increase the number of residences in those areas if necessary. So it would still be possible, for example, for Governments to permit residential flats in commercial areas near to major transport routes, up until the point at which the area became mainly residential, after which the people would decide.
There will be no other local impacts. No-one will be forced to move if the people vote to have a lower population. There will be no restrictions on the movement of people at all. The only restrictions will be on development which would permit a change in population density which the local people do not want.

7. Nationally: The People’s Decision for Australia will become the prime (but not exclusive) determinant of the number of people permitted to migrate into Australia.

The migration intake which the Government announces each year deals with people who will be permitted to stay for 12 months or more. In future, existing visa categories which permit entry for more than 12 months would be divided into two groups.
- A National Interest category, comprising all those who are brought in to serve Australia’s self interest. This would include skilled, business and student migrants, family re-union entrants, working holiday makers and so on.
- An International Obligations category, comprising those we permit to enter for selfless reasons, or because of existing treaties and arrangements with other countries. Mainly this group would include refugees and those admitted for humanitarian reasons, plus New Zealand citizens, who have for decades been granted free access (with reciprocal rights for Australians who move to New Zealand).

Each year a National Interest calculation would be made. From the number representing the People’s Decision for Australia (see point 5 above), the following would be subtracted:
- The expected natural increase (i.e. births minus deaths), assuming current fertility and mortality rates are equal to the average for the previous five years; and
- The expected number of migrant departures, assuming that the rate of departure remains the same as the average over the last five years.
The figure remaining would indicate the number of new visas which could be issued to new migrants each year. An adjustment would then be made to take account of the propensity of some potential migrants to obtain a visa but then not travel to Australia.

In summary, in mathematical terms:

People’s Decision minus expected natural increase minus expected migrant departures equals new National Interest visas which can be issued (propensity adjusted).

If the result of the calculation is zero or negative, the Government would be prevented from issuing visas in National Interest category for that year, because the people would have decided that it was not in their interests to admit more people that year. If the result of the calculation is positive, the Government would be able to issue visas in any of the National Interest categories up to the number permitted by the Peoples’ Decision, taking account of the propensity of some migrants not to take up the offer of a visa.

We Will Decide would have no effect on the International Obligations category. The Government would still decide the refugee and humanitarian intake, and New Zealanders would come and go as they please, as Australians do in relation to New Zealand.

Implementation

8. From the time a decision is made to introduce the We Will Decide proposal, migration levels should be reduced dramatically, pending a trial of the proposal. Assuming in-principle adoption in 2013, it should be possible to run a voluntary trial of the proposal in 2015 which can be used to guide the migration intake from then. The next census will occur in August 2016. The We Will Decide process will formally take effect when the census results become available in early 2017.

9. We Will Decide can be introduced without amending the Census and Statistics Act. A new regulation under s.8(3) of the Act would however need to be made and placed before each House of Parliament.

10. The People’s Decision for Australia could be implemented by the Commonwealth Government voluntarily following it when formulating the migration intake each year, but it would be far better for the changes to be implemented by amendments to the Migration Act.

11. The Commonwealth Parliament could impose the People’s Decision at a Local Level on the Territories, but has no power over planning and development within the States. The most it could do there would be to authorise planning authorities at all levels to take the People’s Decision into account, using the incidental power in s.51(xxxix) of the Constitution.

Implementation at a State level would require the co-operation of State Parliaments, which would need to amend their planning laws.

Thoughts on David Suzuki’s observation that Canada is FULL. Now is the opportune moment to say that on this issue, Dr. David Suzuki is right.
Suzuki has offered us a golden opportunity to resurrect a longstanding demand. We need to develop a Population Plan for this country. We need to start a conversation that would answer one critical question about Canada. "How many people do we want to live here?"

In any discussion about immigration, invariably there is one recurrent statement that never fails to grate. The oft-repeated line that "Canada is a nation of immigrants". It is a cliche that at once manages to be both untrue in the immediate sense and meaningless in its broader truth.

It is untrue because fully 79% of Canadians were born in this country. To say then that we are a nation of immigrants is like saying that the 401 is a highway of heavy trucks. Yes, there are many heavy trucks using
the 401, but the vast majority of vehicles travelling on that road are family cars. In truth, then, the only accurate observation one could make about the 401 is that it is a major conduit of motorized vehicle traffic. So what?

Ah yes, you say, but if we were born here, our parents, our grandparents or our great-grandparents were not. "So we are all immigrants". Well, that could be said of EVERY SINGLE NATION ON THE PLANET because ultimately all of humanity issued out of the Olduvai gorge. We are all then "Africans". So what is your point? That no nation has a right to determine who takes up residence in their country and how many? That unfettered migration is a divine right? That because we entered the elevator from the lobby therefore none of us have a moral right to close the door no matter how much weight is on board?

The ability to migrate, to move to areas of greater resource abundance is and has been a key fertility stimulant. Less densely populated areas offer the promise of raising larger families. The promise of greater prosperity. More material opportunities. That is what spurs migration.

But there comes a point when what Dave Foreman calls "superabundance" gives way to mere abundance and then finally to scarcity. That was the case with every continent in the world and in recent history it has been the case with North America and Australia. Yet despite this obvious transformation we---the grandchildren or great grandchildren of migrants---cling to an absurd and obsolete frontier mentality that is not appropriate to our actual predicament. That "immigrants built this country" may be a truism, but it is also true that a country can become
over-built, and that our current population level is far beyond the carrying capacity of the land to support it.

Such is the case with Canada, a large land mass with a deceptively small carrying capacity---like Antarctica.

Who will talk about fertility, immigration and global overpopulation? Who will point out that migration and global
overpopulation are intimately bound up together? And if there ever was a time to make that point, when would be better than now, after an environmental celebrity of Asian ancestry has stuck his neck out to say what the majority of Canadians are thinking? Are we going to let him hang out to dry? Are we by our silence going to feed the

McCarthyist ambition to squelch any national discussion on this issue?

Now is the opportune moment to say that on this issue, Dr. David Suzuki is right.

Suzuki has offered us a golden opportunity to resurrect a longstanding demand. We need to develop a Population Plan for this country. We need to start a conversation that would answer one critical question about Canada. "How many people do we want to live here?"

Macedon Ranges Shire Council has a very short survey on its website about the future of Hanging Rock, asking if you support large scale concerts being staged on this deeply iconic place of legend and film. The survey closes tomorrow, Friday 28 June 2013. There are some things you should know before you allow this site to be changed irreversibly. Here’s a link to the survey, but please first see our recommendation.

http://www.mrsc.vic.gov.au/Council_the_Region/News_Media/Latest_News/Hanging_Rock_Concerts_Community_Survey Please take a moment to complete the survey. Only identification it asks for is post code (e.g. 3442 for Woodend).

But before you click, here are some things you may not know:

• The ‘East Paddock’ at Hanging Rock used for concerts was acquired by the old Shire of Newham and Woodend to protect Hanging Rock. Now Council is proposing large scale commercial use of that land.
• The Hanging Rock development is a project promoted in the draft Loddon Mallee South Regional [Major] Growth Plan that the Macedon Ranges’ community wasn’t consulted about.
• Council (i.e. Macedon Ranges’ ratepayers) spent $200,000 (as part of a $600,000 project) on the East Paddock in 2011/12.
• Macedon Ranges Council recently received $2m Federal funding towards the $4m cost of the development currently proposed at Hanging Rock. Council is borrowing $550,000 this year, with another $1 million to come ($1.6 million full cost to Macedon Ranges’ ratepayers).
• Total cost of concerts to ratepayers so far: $1.8m.
• Council is always talking about ‘flow-on’ economic effects but not how much ratepayers get out of the concerts (the Wrecking Ball concerts in Australia made $25m in ticket sales [Billboard.com]).
• The promoter of the concerts, who apparently isn’t contributing to the development, is accredited in local papers with saying this development is only stage 1, there is more to come.
• According to Council’s 4 April 2013 media release, 34,000 people attended the two Springsteen concerts but only 3,000 were from Macedon Ranges Shire, so it’s not really about locals.
• This survey is the first time Council has ‘consulted’ the Macedon Ranges’ community about how Hanging Rock is and will be used.
• Plans of the proposed development have not been made public, but apparently include connecting the East Paddock to infrastructure and services, and construction of a hard surface stage area.

Comment and Recommendation:



If you are OK with local Macedon Ranges’ residents paying high rates and going into debt to subsidize “large scale” concerts, and undisclosed development, at Hanging Rock, without the community being consulted, by all means support future “large scale” concerts. That’s what our Council wants.

On the other hand, we think it’s pretty rude that Council still hasn’t asked us if we want any development or commercial use at Hanging Rock; still hasn’t provided any information about what it plans and what it costs; doesn’t seem to be making anything out of it all; and the best ‘consultation’ Council can manage is asking a couple of leading questions after it has committed to spending our money and developing our land.

Our recommendation: Click ‘no’ to large scale concerts, and tell Macedon Ranges Council to come clean about everything that is going on at Hanging Rock.

There is an Orwellian new Bill on the brink of being passed in Victoria's Parliament. (Debate 27 June) The Bill justifies reducing public rights to consultation and objection by narrowing the scope of consultation, by reducing the scope of information given to the public in respect of revocation of reserves of public land and compulsory acquisition of land, public and private. It allows enormous discretion on the part of the Minister with regard to what information and consultation he allows, even with local government bodies. The really Orwellian part of the Bill is the circular justification of these reductions in citizens' civil rights on so-called grounds of 'efficiency' and 'time saving'. In this case 'cutting red tape' means 'cutting out democracy'.

This new Major Transport Projects Facilitation Amendment (East West Link and Other Projects) Bill 2013 is to be debated on 27 June in the Legislative Assembly. The Bill, by its very name, shows that it has been drafted to push through a particular hated series of private toll-roads that will horribly scar our green landscape and drastically reduce habitat for native animals. We refer to the East-West Link, which Kelvin Thomson has described as "con job". This legislation is part of a frightening trend to remove public land, particularly green, natural land and parks from Melbourne and its surrounds.

Protectors of Public Lands Victoria Inc say that it is very important that the public attend Parliament for the second reading and debate on the Major Transport Projects Facilitation Amendment (East West Link and Other Projects) Bill 2013 in the Legislative Assembly on Thursday 27 June 2013.

Government and Opposition need to see large numbers of the public in attendance in the public galleries. It is important to signify public vigilance and opposition to the East West Link and support for the Doncaster Rail Project, which the public actually want and which represents a true alternative.

Thursday 27 June 2013 is the last sitting day of Parliament before the winter recess. The Bill will go to the Upper House - the Legislative Council - to be considered on the first day of the new term of Parliamentary sitting i.e. 20 August 2013.

By next Tuesday afternoon there should be an estimated time for the Bill to be heard in the Legislative Assembly on the Thursday 27 June and therefore when to attend. The public can ring the Legislative Assembly Papers Office by ringing the Parliament House switch phone: 9651 8911 or try [email protected].

Community Activist groups monitoring these proposed reductions in democratic rights to object to unwanted development are Protectors of Public Lands Victoria Inc. (PPL VIC) and Yarra Campaign for Action on Transport (YCAT)

Below we have emboldened key comments in the parliamentary 'statement of compatibility with human rights' of the bill. Below that we have reproduced the second reading of the bill.

Page 2162

MAJOR TRANSPORT PROJECTS FACILITATION AMENDMENT (EAST WEST
LINK AND OTHER PROJECTS) BILL 2013

Statement of compatibility

Mr MULDER (Minister for Public Transport) tabled following statement in
accordance with Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities Act 2006:

In accordance with section 28 of the Charter of Human Rights and
Responsibilities Act 2006 (charter act), I make this statement of
compatibility with respect to the Major Transport Projects Facilitation
Amendment (East West Link and Other Projects) Bill 2013.

In my opinion, the Major Transport Projects Facilitation Amendment (East West
Link and Other Projects) Bill 2013, as introduced to the Legislative Assembly,
is compatible with the human rights protected by the charter act. I base my
opinion on the reasons outlined in this statement.

Overview of bill

The main purposes of the bill are to:

amend the Major Transport Projects Facilitation Act 2009 to reduce
procedural delays and red tape in relation to major transport projects; and

amend the Transport Integration Act 2010 to improve the operation of that
act.

Human rights issues

Section 15 of the charter act protects a person's right to freedom of
expression, which includes the freedom to seek, receive and impart
information. The right to freedom of expression is not absolute; lawful
restrictions reasonably necessary to protect the rights of other persons, or
for the protection of public order and public health, are permissible under
the charter act.

Restricting a person's ability to receive information in the form of
Government Gazette notices could engage the right of freedom of expression.
Clauses 7(2), 11(1), 12(1), 15, 17(3), 22, 51, 52 and 65(1) in the bill remove
requirements to publish certain notices in the Government Gazette from the
Major Transport Projects Facilitation Act 2009.

However, the bill does not limit the right of freedom of expression because it
requires or does not affect the requirement to publish notices on websites of
agencies and, therefore, the relevant information remains widely accessible to
the public and potentially in a way that is more accessible and user friendly.
In some cases (clauses 6 and 14(2)), the requirement to publish information on
the departmental website is new and therefore positively promotes the right to
receive information.

Clauses 16(c) and 23(c) of the bill change requirements relating to
documentation for assessment under the impact management plan and
comprehensive impact statement respectively. The changes remove some
information requirements for those documents which could engage the right of
freedom of information as it affects the ability of the public to receive
information.

[Ends justify the means? (Ed.)]

In so far as these amendments limit the right to the freedom of information,
in my opinion the limitation is justifiable and proportionate to the bill's
objective of reducing red tape and procedural delays. In addition, the
restrictions are limited in nature as the information is still provided in
accordance with scoping directions (the publicly available requirements for
project assessment documentation) issued by the planning minister and sections
27(a), (f)-(h) and 39(a), (f)-(i).

Clause 21 of the bill also engages the right to freedom of expression by
amending the Major Transport Projects Facilitation Act 2009 to allow the
planning minister to confine the scope of any public hearing to specified
matters. Clause 21 may also engage the right to take part in public life by
limiting the degree of involvement during a public hearing, if the minister
exercises his or her discretion to confine the scope of a hearing.

Section 18 of the charter act provides that every person has the right, and is
to have the opportunity, without discrimination, to participate in the conduct
of public affairs, directly or through freely chosen representatives, for
example by exerting influence through public dialogue and debate with elected
representatives.

However, members of the public are not restricted from making written
submissions to the assessment committee and verbal submissions to the
assessment committee where a confinement does not apply. Therefore, although
clause 21 of the bill limits these rights, in my opinion the limitation is
justifiable on the basis that the limitation reflects the purpose of the bill
to reduce procedural delay and cut red tape in relation to major transport
projects. It is also a limited restriction as members of the public are still
able to convey their views and participate in the engagement process required
by the Major Transport Projects Facilitation Act 2009. Therefore the public
can still participate in influencing the final approval decision of the
minister.

Section 19(1) of the charter act provides that all persons with a particular
cultural, religious, racial or linguistic background must not be denied the
right, in community with other persons of that background, to enjoy his or her
culture.

Clause 59 of the bill allows for reservations of land under the Crown Land
(Reserves) Act 1978 to be revoked and therefore engages cultural rights
generally. The Crown Land (Reserves) Act 1978 enables Crown land to be
permanently or temporarily reserved for a range of purposes, including
purposes which involve the creation, protection or preservation of places of
cultural significance.

However, revoking a reservation for the purpose of an approved project will
only occur following an assessment and approvals process under the Major
Transport Projects Facilitation Act 2009 and a transparent and public process
under division 5 of part 3 of that act. Therefore, the bill maintains cultural
rights by providing groups whose cultural rights may be affected and the
public generally with an opportunity to participate in the decision-making
process where a reservation is revoked.

Clause 59 also engages the right to take part in public life as impacts on
public participation on the basis that reservations can be revoked. However,
again the limitation is proportionate and justifiable on the basis that the
revocation must occur in accordance with the proper processes under the Crown
Land (Reserves) Act 1978 and the public participation mechanisms in the Major
Transport Projects Facilitation Act 2009.

Section 20 of the charter act provides that a person must not be deprived of
his or her property other than in accordance with law. Any law that deprives a
person of property must be accessible, sufficiently precise and should not
provide for an arbitrary interference with property. Clause 73 of the bill
inserts a new section 138A into the Transport Integration Act 2009 which
allows the Linking Melbourne Authority to compulsorily acquire land required
in connection with the performance of its powers or the exercise of its
functions.

Compulsory acquisition of an individual's land is a deprivation of property
for the purpose of the right to property. However, the acquisition of
interests in land under the bill requires ministerial approval.

[That's sure to be a big comfort! - Ed.]

The compensation requirements in the Land Acquisition and Compensation Act 2009
also apply, with minor modifications.

A person deprived of their land under these clauses must be properly notified
and compensated, and may test the lawfulness of an acquisition through
judicial review. In addition, clause 55 does not limit planning compensation.
Accordingly, in my view, compulsory acquisition of land under the bill would
be in accordance with the law and these provisions do not limit the property
right.

Conclusion

For the reasons outlined above, I consider that the bill is compatible with
the charter act.

Terry Mulder, MP

Minister for Public Transport

MAJOR TRANSPORT PROJECTS FACILITATION AMENDMENT (EAST WEST
LINK AND OTHER PROJECTS) BILL 2013

Second reading Title MAJOR TRANSPORT PROJECTS FACILITATION AMENDMENT (EAST WEST LINK AND OTHER PROJECTS) BILL 2013

House ASSEMBLY
Activity Second Reading
Members MULDER
Date 13 June 2013 Page 2163

Page 2163

MAJOR TRANSPORT PROJECTS FACILITATION AMENDMENT (EAST WEST
LINK AND OTHER PROJECTS) BILL 2013

Second reading

Mr MULDER (Minister for Public Transport)

-- I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

Transport context

Victoria is growing and changing. The demand for travel and the need to
efficiently move people and goods is growing every day.

The coalition government is committed to delivering major transport
infrastructure projects. They are essential to our economic future and our
livability.

Congestion on roads and on public transport hurts our economy and affects all of
our day-to-day lives.

The government is taking decisive action to cut red tape to allow for the
assessment and delivery of major transport projects more quickly and
efficiently.

Legislation has a key part to play in cutting red tape to address the
infrastructure backlog. This is central to transforming our transport system.
Put simply, this bill will deliver much needed infrastructure sooner, and at a
lower cost.

The coalition did not oppose the Major Transport Projects Facilitation Act when
it was introduced into this house in 2009.

There are, however, a range of improvements that need to be made to the scheme
to cut red tape and boost productivity for the assessment, and delivery of
declared projects.

The benefits to major transport projects

The east-west road link, the Melbourne Metro rail tunnel and the port of
Hastings are transformative projects. The quicker they are delivered, the
quicker Victorians and Victorian businesses will see the benefits.

The east-west road link is a city-shaping project for Victoria. The new
18-kilometre cross-city freeway-standard link will provide an alternative to the

---

Page 2164

M1 corridor, alleviate chronic congestion and improve travel time for motorists
and allow freight to be moved around more quickly. The government has committed
to fund stage 1 of this project, which has an estimated capital cost of between
$6 billion and $8 billion.

The Melbourne Metro rail tunnel will untangle the rail network and unlock the
capacity needed to expand the network and increase services to Melbourne's
growth areas in the north, west and south-east. Creating capacity, particularly
in the city loop, also means that more trains can run on all the lines, not just
those running through the new tunnel. In 2012, the government made the first
state contribution to the project, allocating $49.7 million.

Subject to the Premier's approval the legislation will also enable the port of
Hastings development to be delivered.

This project is essential for Victoria's future and the government has provided
$110 million in the budget to kick-start the development.

This act, with the substantial improvements before you, is the foundation on
which these crucial projects can be delivered.

It would also be a mistake to think that the bill is only for
multibillion-dollar projects. It is not just about capital expenditure, it is
about the value to the community that new and upgraded parts of the transport
network can bring. Cycling networks, for example, face the same barriers as
other linear projects in road and rail and the issues associated with getting
projects delivered.

This legislation provides an alternative to the environment effects statement
process and the multiple approvals required to deliver state-significant
projects.

Delivering major transport projects is a very costly exercise. This bill is
designed to cut down on bureaucracy and channel state funds to where it can
deliver the most benefit -- the transport infrastructure on which we all rely.

Policy context

The changes before the house are a cornerstone of the government's budget
commitment to deliver better value in infrastructure planning and delivery.

As the budget papers state:

The government is driving better value for money, streamlining project
approvals and cutting red tape to expedite major projects coming to market.
The government is continuing to implement rigorous processes to improve
infrastructure project delivery and ensure the cost pressures that affected
major projects in the past are not repeated.

This is precisely what this bill is designed to do.

In December last year the government released its economic statement, 'Securing
Victoria's Economy -- Planning, Building, Delivering'.

The strategy outlines the government's vision for public sector reform involving
controlling costs, reducing internal red tape and improving management within
the public sector.

This bill exemplifies this government's commitment to work harder and to work
smarter to cut red tape so the benefits of major transport projects can be
delivered sooner.

The bill

Part 1 of the bill deals with preliminary matters.

Part 2 of the bill makes changes to the Major Transport Projects Facilitation
Act 2009 to:

introduce a more risk-based assessment regime;

enable early works on projects, including the

east-west link;

shorten statutory time frames to improve productivity and speed up projects;

simplify administrative processes;

enable more efficient land assembly and project delivery; and

extend the scope of the act.

Part 3 of the bill addresses other related amendments.

Key changes to the regime

Moving progressively to a risk-based assessment enables a more proportionate
approach to different risks. This will improve assessment efficiencies and
deliver a more practical and focused assessment report for public exhibition and
consultation.

Early works on projects can provide an opportunity to structure projects to
maximise efficiency and create jobs sooner. This bill makes clear that
declaration of a project does not prevent the delivery of early works outside of
the act's provisions. The act expands, rather than replaces, the methods of
obtaining the necessary approvals for a major transport project. For projects

---

Page 2165

with early works, it is simply a matter of obtaining any required planning or
environment approvals in accordance with existing applicable laws.

This bill makes significant cuts to time frames for decisions in the assessment
and approval process. Time frames for decisions around pathways, scoping,
release of key documents and approvals have all been halved or more than halved.

The bill not only cuts time frames for decision making, but changes the scheme
to allocate resources more efficiently and shift the focus to the project,
rather than the process itself. An example of this is the simplification of the
administrative steps required to have a project declared.

What the bill does not do is reduce the time frame for public exhibition -- the
onus is on government and government agencies to work more efficiently. This
power does not prevent government from consulting with councils, where relevant.

The bill extends an existing provision to make clear that councils cannot
frustrate projects once that project has been approved by the Minister for
Planning.

The bill introduces a statutory duty on state agencies to act and make decisions
expeditiously to avoid delay.

The bill also enables more efficient project delivery by reducing red tape to
improve the arrangements for land assembly.

Conclusion

The changes cut red tape to boost productivity in the assessment and delivery of
projects under the act.

The burden of red tape in the system is shouldered by the community and by
business. Every week a project is tied up in administration is another week of
congestion on our transport system. Congestion increases business costs and
decreases the amount of time we all get to spend with our families.

This bill cuts red tape for projects. This bill cuts the time taken to assess,
approve and deliver major transport projects. This bill gives that time back to
the people of Victoria.

I commend the bill to the house.

Debate adjourned on motion of Mr SCOTT (Preston).

Debate adjourned until Thursday, 27 June.

Last Updated on Wednesday, 12 May 2010

The recent announcement of yet another new suburb on the outskirts of Melbourne is nothing to celebrate despite its upbeat name of ‘Merrifield’, according to the Victorian and Tasmanian branch of Sustainable Population Australia.

“As Melbourne continually bursts what were once its boundaries, open space for wildlife, agriculture and escape from the metropolis are being swallowed up in a sea of homogeneous suburbia," said President Quirk.

'It is disturbing that, despite our widespread distaste for urban sprawl, the growth machine keeps rolling it out,” she observed."

Ms Quirk described the opening of the new suburb as "a very serious matter." And she said that there is in fact, no end to this very rapid process unless we rein in our population growth.

Myth that Growth is Inevitable

“It is a widely held belief that population growth is inevitable but it is not. Australia and thus Victoria could stabilise their populations by the end of this century by immediately reducing immigration to more modest levels and maintaining our current fertility rate over the long term.” says Ms. Quirk.

Myth that Growth is Good

President Quirk identified another myth - that we must have some growth for its own sake or for some sort of economic benefit. She explained:

There is no benefit in population growth to the people already living in Australia without at least equal growth in both economic output and at the same time an improvement in quality of life. This is not happening, especially with respect to quality of life in this country which has one of the fastest population growth rates of any developed nation.

Quality of life diminishes with overpopulation

She drew attention to the fact that:

Traffic congestion renders many people’s lives utterly miserable in their daily commutes to earn the means to service the mortgages for their unaffordable housing. Natural light is dealt out in meager proportions to those taking up residence in higher density areas of Melbourne closer to the CBD.”

“The promise of 20,000 temporary jobs in Merrifield during construction is an example of the extent to which - in our defective economic system - employment depends on continuing population growth and consequent construction, a process like a dog chasing its tail.

Drawing upon the reliance of human life on the health of the natural world, she said that this process needs to stop "for environmental and thus survival reasons."

Responding to the latest spin from some of the growth lobbyists - that we cannot stop population growth quickly because some people might lose jobs - (Bernard Salt on the ABC on Tuesday 21 May, RN Drive with Waleed Aly), she said that purportedly we have been increasing overseas immigration because there are not enough people to do those jobs.

The bigger and faster population growth, the harder to stop

She stressed, however, that:

"The real problem with deliberately accelerating our population growth now is that it will make the job of stabilising our population in the future an increasingly slow, painful and difficult task, like turning the Queen Mary around. By that time the necessity will be obvious to everyone.”

“In the interests of all, a clever Victorian government should be planning for a stable population in Victoria, as cheap energy becomes more scarce, as our environment deteriorates as a result of population pressure, and as climate change reduces the state’s human carrying capacity."

She concluded by saying that a far sighted Victorian government would get us off the growth merry-go-round - sooner rather than later - out of consideration for younger and future generations who will be left to pick up the environmental, economic and social pieces of our population excesses.

Queensland clearing laws could kill over 400 million native animalsl The Commonwealth must act to stop the destruction.

More about the upcoming 2013 environmental exhibition containing this painting, at end of this article under "Notes".

Sydney 24/5/13:

Impact of new Queensland laws and Coalition intentions

Humane Society International (HSI) Campaign Director Michael Kennedy said today:

“With the passage of legislation through the Queensland Parliament this week allowing farmers to clear potentially large areas of threatened wildlife habitats and graze cattle in National Parks, and news confirming that an incoming Coalition Government would devolve the Commonwealth’s national environment powers to the states and territories, a national environmental disaster is looming.”

Mr Kennedy continued,

“Under the amendments to Queensland’s Vegetation Management Act, approximately 2,000,000 hectares (5,000,000 acres) of wildlife habitats are at-risk of clearing*. Extrapolating from a scientific report** on the numbers of animals killed during land clearing operations in Queensland during the late 90s, it can be estimated that if all land clearing options were taken up by Queensland farmers, in the region of 455 million native animals could be killed as a result. And even if only a quarter of this land total was cleared, we are still talking about killing over 100 million animals.”

The Commonwealth’s Environment Protection & Biodiversity Conservation Act (EPBC Act) also protects 14 threatened ecological communities.*** in Queensland, highly endangered habitats that require the Federal Environment Minister’s permission before any development can occur that may significantly affect them. It is estimated* that 169,000 hectares of mature bushland and 366,000 hectares of important regrowth habitats of these threatened ecological communities are now at risk from clearing, presenting Minister Burke with clear reasons for intervening in Queensland.

Cattle grazing is also highly destructive on the natural environment, spreading weeds, significantly damaging waterways and having the potential to destroy critical habitats and native ground-dwelling species. Giving a few private individuals access to a highly valuable public asset, due to their continuing incompetence, is a public policy travesty. Calls by the RSPCA in Queensland to allow cattle to graze in National Parks are chronically misguided, and do not address the root cause of the plight of the animals – greed and prolonged environmental and livestock mismanagement.

Mr Kennedy concluded,

“We are urging the Prime Minister and Environment Minster Burke to change the Federal environment laws so that any incoming Coalition Government cannot devolve national environment powers; introduce new national environment “triggers” for land clearing and the National Reserve System; and to “call-in” Queensland land clearing and cattle grazing proposals and actions for assessment under the EPBC Act.”

NOTES

*http://www.hsi.org.au/emailmarketer/link.php?M=135579&N=1607&L=379&F=H

**http://www.hsi.org.au/emailmarketer/link.php?M=135579&N=1607&L=380&F=H

***HSI prepared scientific listing proposals for 8 of these threatened communities

Re image, "Apocalypse". From the original site at http://www.cantonart.org/20"This touring art exhibition confronts environmental issues facing human, plant and wildlife species in our time, from land development to natural resource depletion, and seeks to heighten public awareness through the power of art. The show is curated by Dr. David J. Wagner, author of the reference book, American Wildlife Art, and curator/tour director of an impressive list of exhibitions including The Art of Robert Bateman, The Sea of Cortez, and Endangered Species: Flora and Fauna in Peril which toured to the U.S. Department of Interior in Washington, D.C. The exhibition features iconic works such Still Not Listening, a poem and sculpture of the same title by Leo Osborne, an elegy to victims of the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska. (Image: Apocalypse, Walter Ferguson)"

A rally was held today on the steps of Parliament House in Melbourne " to protest against new laws proposed by the Napthine government which are undeniably bad news for forests.

A rally was held today (7 May 2013) on the steps of Parliament House in Melbourne.

According to Jill Redwood of Environment East Gippsland, ‘Infinity logging’ is the new law proposed by the Napthine Government. If passed the Bill will formalise a new ‘cut-out-and-get-out’ style of forest management in the short term as well as pay millions to the logging industry in the long term.

The proposed Amendments to this law governing native forest logging will hand full powers to VicForests (the profit-driven semi government entity in charge of logging public forests) and it will expose the state of Victoria to payouts to the industry players of hundreds of millions. This change to the law mirrors closely what the logging lobby group, AFPA’s submission demanded.

"The changes would:
1. Promise unlimited logging contracts (currently licenses have 5 year reviews).
2. Remove government oversight of VicForests’ activities.
3. Effectively privatise the exploitation of the state’s most valuable public natural asset.
4. Promise to supply logs into the future that may not exist, due to fire, drought regeneration failure and so on.
5. Expose the tax-payer and government to paying hundreds of millions in compensation when/if the trees can’t be provided .
6. See forests managed by purely commercial interests with token to no concern for environmental, tourism, heritage, aesthetic or water values.
7. Make it impossible to alter the law if the wood/trees have been promised to a private company by VicForests. The government must provide the logs or pay massive compensation.
8. Allow VicForests Board of Directors to decide when, where and how much it will clearfell .
9. Override and ignore the Auditor General’s current audit of VicForests’ management and the recommendations that will come from it.
10. Remove environmental oversight of logging in native forests.

VicForests has been found to be consistently over-logging, logging unlawfully, unaccountably and in the face of enormous and escalating community opposition. They are last entity that should be trusted to manage logging our public forests!

This proposed change of the law hopes to encourage even more destructive industries to use forests as a feedstock for biomass burning for electricity and processing into fuel. (Timber Industry Action Plan. Dec 2011). Hence this ‘overkill Bill’ to entice prospective investors and industries that want wood as a raw material."

I saw about 40 people for this rally on the steps of Parliament at about 1.30 p.m. and one human sized owl. A later rally was going to take place around 3.00pm and the parliament was to debate the law this afternoon. Go to the website of Environment East Gippsland http://www.eastgippsland.net.au/ to see what you can do

What would Dr Nugget Coombs think of our treatment of the environment and the economy today? Quark applies a retrospectoscope to the problem as she reports on a 1970 Boyer Lecture on environment and economy.

"…In the protracted quarrel between the nature lovers and the money spinners, certain premises have been taken for granted: we can have a rising standard of living at the cost of destruction and pollution, or we can preserve some of the quality of the continent at the cost of material comforts. ..”

A yellowing square of newsprint fell out of an aged scrap book taken from a bulging filing cabinet. It is a random piece amongst many old fragments of decades old news. It is from the Melbourne newspaper “The Age” dated Saturday November 14, 1970 and looks to be an editorial titled "Selling the future".

The subject of the article is the 2nd Boyer lecture given by eminent economist, public servant and first governor of the Reserve Bank, Dr. H.C. (Nugget) Coombs,1906-1997. According to the article, Dr Coombs declared the choice between environment and standard of living was a “false dichotomy”.

Dr Coombs, says the article, wanted Australia to conserve the

“unique treasures of the Barrier Reef and the unique culture of the Aborigines”.

The article continues ,

“He is equally insistent that we should not join in a mad scramble to sell off the newly discovered mineral resources of the nation to foreign interests to make a quick dollar .Such behaviour, he warned, is economically irresponsible and a ‘betrayal of our heirs and successors’.

It goes on to say ‘Even recent discoveries do not guarantee that Australia has inexhaustible reserves of oil and metallic ores. To sell off our rights to these capital assets in a mood of ‘mineral madness’ is to hand over the bulk of these assets to foreign enterprises interested only in short term gains.'

According to the article, Dr. Coombs

“believes we have nothing to lose and much to gain by letting some of these resources lie undisturbed for later generations to exploit. Their market value is likely to increase as the world resources of minerals are consumed and as Australian technology improves to the point where we can process them in this country instead of selling them off for a fractional benefit”

Did Australia’s technology improve to the point where the country was able to “add value” to raw materials or did global economics get in the way of this happening or being maintained? How often now do we hear of any consideration being given to future generations and the need to leave resources for them to use? Rarely, I would say. What I am hearing now is that Australia’s “resources boom” might over, meaning that we are not extracting minerals as quickly as we would like, to bolster our economy.

Oil production in Australia has been declining for at least 10 years. Where will this leave future generations? We cannot be confident that this resource will not be needed in the light of perfected “renewables”.

The old "Age" article continues with Coombs’ thoughts:

“In the meantime , our techniques for preserving and conserving the natural environment must improve. We are still in the very early stages of developing a balanced programme of ecology and if we are too greedy we may do harm which can never be repaired.”

I wonder what Coombs would say about the environment reports that have come out from the various states in the last 20 years. Environment is not important to governments today.

This has been expressed again very clearly by the Victorian government having very recently tucked Environment in with Primary Industry.

Apart from the possible conflict between the 2 sections, environment is ultimately all we have. It should have a department all its own!

Again from the editorial -

“As chairman of the Council for Aboriginal Affairs, Dr. Coombs has his own close and studied interest in the preservation of the first human culture in this continent. Before making any further decisions on the mining of Aboriginal reserves, people in power should carefully ponder the question which he asks ‘by what calculus can one assess the relative importance of instant profits from the dispersal of wasting assets against the destruction of a way of life unique in the world?’ "

'This is not the kind of talk used in elections; it is a long sighted view of the future of the this country, as well as its immediate economic needs. Politicians on both sides of the fence would do well to read this paper and treat it with the seriousness due to a major national problem. It not only affects our lives but the lives of our children.'

The grandchildren and even great- grand children of the adults who cast their eyes over this editorial back in 1970 are now here. Have the intervening generations done the right thing by them?

At the time the article was written, the largest concentration of rock art in the world - an amazing gallery of aboriginal observation and history on the Burrup Peninsula, Dampier Archipelago - had barely been discovered. In the meantime it has been severely compromised through industrial and infrastructure projects.

Thank goodness in 2008, the Australian Government placed 90% of the remaining rock art areas of the Dampier Archipelago on the National Heritage List.

Would Coombs be pleased with the degree to which Australia adds value to its mineral exports? The iron ore that Australia exports now has a much higher phosphorus ad silica content than previously, suggesting that the highest quality ore has already been mined - an indication that we have not been thinking of future generations.

I imagine Coombs was already horrified at the time he died with the destruction of Australia’s environment and we are now 16 years further down that path of environmental destruction.

What is interesting is that “The Age” back in 1970, thoughtfully conveyed Coombs’ Boyer lecture, so remote from immediate economic considerations in its editorial.

Today Australia reaches a population of 23 million. If we assess this against the status of our life-support systems, we should be alarmed. Neither Australia nor Earth is ecologically sustainable as shown by our national state of the environment reporting and the estimate that humans are consuming 150% of Earth’s renewable capacity. Population size is one of the underlying drivers of these trends. Should they continue, the implications for future generations are clear.

Way back in 1994, The Australian Academy of Science said “In our view, the quality of all aspects of our children’s lives will be maximised if the population of Australia by the mid 21st Century is kept to the low, stable end of the achievable range, i.e. to approximately 23 million” and “If our population reaches the high end of the feasible range (37 million), the quality of life of all Australians will be lowered by the degradation of water, soil, energy and biological resources.”

Cui bono? Big business benefits from more people via increased demand and constraints on wages. The average Aussie does not benefit economically while suffering from increased traffic congestion and pressure on various services i.e., the costs are socialised. And our life-supporting ecological systems are degraded.

If we value our children’s future and nature in general, we must apply the brakes to our ever-growing ecological footprint and population size. This issue deserves priority attention but is mostly ignored. For example, on the day of reaching 23 million, the Sydney Morning Herald found editorial space for the farce concerning the governor-general but not for population growth and its consequences.

Alan Jones, PhD,
Senior Fellow
Australian Museum

Max Planck's adage should therefore be amended to read that "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it --- and by being adequately funded and promoted by people who incarnate Dale Carnegie's formula for success."

Influencing Influential People

Let me share my cynicism about the role of funding and politics in assigning value to new ideas.

I wished I had $. I am quite financially stressed, and after phoning a travel agent, and Kelowna Tourist bureau twice over the last 3 days, I informed my ally in mischief, Madeline Weld, that I probably can't make it to that Kelowna CSEE conference.

After 6 years of full-out activism I have come to a jaded conclusion about the value of conferences. As JK Galbraith said of them, they take place to simulate action. They are more like revival meetings in that their real purpose is to allow the devout to meet folks of their own kind and be assured that they are not alone--and with their morale thus boosted, return home with a false sense of momentum and confidence. Nevertheless, I have also noticed that attending conferences is mandatory for those who want their papers and books published and well reviewed. Successful authors must physically meet with their peers, look into their eyes, shake their hands, tell them jokes, exchange small talk, and form a 'relationship' with them over the buffet table or dinner afterward. Once they have done that, then anything they subsequently write will be elevated to a stature that is not merited by its contents.

For example, I would wager a fair sum that if I were to submit a set of articles to one group---the control group---with my name on it, and a second set of identical articles to a second group with let's say, William Rees' name on it, the latter group would instantly proclaim my articles a masterpiece, while the former would likely ignore or dismiss it. Several examples could be summoned to validate this belief, but two will suffice. Author Doris Lessing found that once she reached celebrity, her manuscripts were greeted with enthusiasm and her not-so-brilliant books were assured of wide purchase. So as an experiment, she wrote a story under a pseudonym. It was largely ignored. Coincidence? I think not.

Another case---Chris Clugston. He has been saying essentially the same thing for five years, but for the first four of those years the people in my network more or less refused to acknowledge his facts and insights, preferring instead to stick with limited eco-footprinting analysis. Call it 'brand loyalty'. ("GPS? No thanks, I will stick with my compass"). Once his work finally percolated up to the organizational top dogs in the network, and once they endorsed it after reading William Catton's endorsement---they suddenly felt able to give him the seal of approval--though they remain true to their fixation on energy and climate change. Call that peer pressure and group-think (as documented by Solomon Asch's research). Chris's problem was that for those first four years he didn't attend any conferences. People heard of him but they had never met him. But things changed after that.

Of course, if his work was utter nonsense, it is unlikely it would have reached that pinnacle. But that is not my point. My point is that a great many people with important and revolutionary concepts that are well articulated remain unknown simply because they lacked the means or the connections to meet the "right" people or the good sense not to offend their egos. Not the smart people, but the influential people. The principal rule is "Thou shalt not trespass revered icons". You must spend a good two paragraphs grovelling before their achievements, thanking them for their past contributions, and genuflecting in their direction, but you must never ever challenge their obsolete shibboleths. (Now repeat after me, "We must educate and empower women", "couples must be free to choose their family size", "we must return to a sustainable population level of 2 billion", "we must stop growing") There is no new knowledge, only revealed truth. The truth according to Ehrlich, Brown, Bartlett, Rees and Wackernagel.

Our movement is much like a monarchy. You do not displace those in the pantheon or their staid commentaries, you can only out-live them. They will be celebrated by the guardians of orthodoxy in the organization's hierarchy until they pass. Challenge them and you and your ideas will be banished to the margins. You must play the game and waste precious time earning brownie points with mediocre minds who achieve job security by spouting the party line for organizations dedicated to not solving the problems that sustain donations. They are our priesthood.

In other words, there is a class of people in our movement I call "schmoozers", who make a lifestyle of resting their comfortable arses in DC or jet-setting around the continent (or the world) attending conferences, and come to form a sub-culture of insiders who use their political power within the movement to act as arbiters and filters of incoming ideas. Good luck to you if you have something novel or important to say but haven't run their social gauntlet or been personally vetted by them. And how do you get vetted? By going to conferences and glad-handing them. If you lack the financial means to go to conferences, your ideas are essentially quarantined. It's a good thing that somebody gave Einstein the dough to travel or we would still be clinging to Newtonian physics--the EFA of the scientific establishment until the 1920s.

I have a suspicion that many of the ascendant ideas in science---or any field---owe as much of their success to politics and funding as to anything else. That surely can't be regarded as an earth-shattering revelation, but it think it has never been more true than it is now. Max Planck's adage should therefore be amended to read that "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it --- and by being adequately funded and promoted by people who incarnate Dale Carnegie's formula for success."

Money rules, and the ideas of paupers languish. If you sense some bitterness in this observation, your sense is correct.

Tim

PS Something about American culture puzzles me. In American professional sports, for example, if a team consistently posts a losing record, you can expect that the coach or manager will be fired. Good intentions, strong efforts, and bad luck are inadequate excuses. Only results count. It's a tough business. Yet there are people running organizations like Numbers USA, Fair, or the World Watch Institute who have remained in the saddle drawing handsome salaries for DECADES while the population of the United States and the world has grown leaps and bounds unchecked. Shouldn't their careers and their organizations carry an expiry date? Shouldn't they be held accountable for futility? Either their message is wrong or their ability to convey that message is faulty. It would be bad enough if failure was their only sin. But it is worse than that. They have all actively attempted to push alternative ideas and approaches off the stage in order to maintain their monopoly of the cause, managing the problem rather than addressing its root cause in order to milk a limited donor basee. They are living validation of Michels' Iron Law of Oligarchy.

Tony Burke had no legal obligation to even consider the threatened koalas in Leard forest for the Maules Creek and Boggabri approval. New loopholes could see developers and miners determining if koalas are under threat.

Federal documents obtained by the ABC unveiled on 13 February that the Federal government is endeavouring to make it even easier for miners and developers to avoid protecting koalas.

This comes as Federal Minister Tony Burke approves the Maules Creek and Boggabri open cut coal mines in Leard forest, despite never considering the impacts to koalas.

"The thousands of hectares of Leard State forest to be destroyed by the open cut coal mines are teeming with koalas, however they are offered absolutely no protection by the 2012 addition of the koala to the federal threatened species list," said Naomi Hogan of The Wilderness Society.

Tony Burke had no legal obligation to even consider the hundreds of Koalas that will certainly die as a result of the Boggabri and Maules Creek open cut coal mines in Leard forest. The Maules Creek and Boggabri open coal mining applications were lodged before the koala became a federally listed threatened species, so the Federal government isn't obliged to even consider the koala's plight. The koalas in Leard forest now face a slash and burn future. In essence, the federal koala protection law is useless to the koalas facing a forest wipe out by the Maules Creek and Boggabri open cut approvals."

This date discrepancy is just one of many loopholes in our Federal environmental protection law.

On 13 February it was revealed by the ABC that under the leaked draft federal guidelines, the applicant seeking to develop an area must establish for themselves if an area has koalas and if their proposed activity will have an impact on the habitat. The guidelines to not include any koala maps nor a requirement for long term koala surveys.

"No developer, no mining company can be trusted to undertake their own assessments of threatened species. Mining companies are driven by their legal requirement to make money, not to protect our threatened koalas. I have no doubt that many mining companies would rather see koalas dead than have them interrupting with their profits," said Ms Hogan.

Media Release 13 February 2013 from The Wilderness Society

The new science of ecology will now describe animals as they really are---moral agents, not biological automatons. And as such, they are to be charged with a moral responsibility to constrain their cravings and live simply so that other animals like them can simply live. Or as they now say on St. Monbiot Island, “Be the reindeer you want the world to be.”

Island in the Behring Sea Renamed To Reflect New Paradigm

Guilty as charged:
Fat, Greedy and White---guilty ungulate “Rudy” reacts to news that responsibility for the infamous St. Matthew Island Reindeer die-off is now attributed to his appetite, rather than to excessive reindeer numbers. Had he eaten lichen modestly, a scientific report says, other reindeer could have lived and the island’s bio-capacity would not have been exceeded. According to data released by the GHN (Global Hoofprint Network) in San Francisco, if all reindeer consumed as much as Rudy did, four planets would have been needed to supply the species sustainably.

Reuterz News Item:

A 137 square mile island in the Behring Sea made famous by the spectacular increase of an introduced reindeer population of 24 in 194 which became 6,000 in number in just two decades ---only to suddenly collapse in a matter of months by 99% until only 42 were left in 1966---was renamed recently in a ceremony to mark the occasion. http://www.stuartmcmillen.com/comics_en/st-matthew-island

What was once known as “St. Matthew Island”, the remote and desolate island is now to be called “St. Monbiot Island National Park”, in honour of renowned environmentalist writer George Monbiot and his trademark “Monbiot Mantra”--which goes something like this: “Overpopulation has little to do with it--it is our appetite, not our numbers. Especially the gluttony of old middle class white guys looking for a scapegoat to deflect attention from their culpability.”

The decision to rename the island came in the wake of a report commissioned by the Sierra Club—and paid for by billionaire David Gelbaum and several of their big corporate donors like natural gas fracker Cheasepeake Energy---that while greedy reindeer of the Northern Hemisphere make up only 5% of the global ungulate population, they account for fully 25% of the total amount of lichen consumed in a given year. Constant repetition of that statistic is now mandatory for every college student who hopes to graduate with a degree in Environmental Studies, Political Science or Communications. Education ministries across the continent have now determined that rote memorization of clichés like these is more cost-efficient than actually teaching young people four years worth of real science.

In other words, the name change was thought necessary to fit the new paradigm, and signalled a watershed moment in the evolution of environmental thinking. Gone is the hopelessly unfashionable and politically incorrect foundational formula of the environmental movement, which assigned critical importance to the population level of a given species when gauging its ecological impact.

Animals redescribed as moral agents

Henceforth, no researcher or environmental commentator will dare to say that any species will grow its numbers to meet the available food supply (the Hopfenberg Hypothesis). Instead, cultural conditioning ---typically in the form of mass advertising and the promotion of a competitive “keep up with the Joneses” mentality---will be regarded as the key driver of environmental degradation and the demise of all species. The new science of ecology will now describe animals as they really are---moral agents, not biological automatons. And as such, they are to be charged with a moral responsibility to constrain their cravings and live simply so that other animals like them can simply live. Or as they now say on St. Monbiot Island,

“Be the reindeer you want the world to be.”

When asked to comment on the historic name-change and park dedication, Canadian Green Party leader Elizabeth May---an aspiring United Church of Canada Minister---remarked that

“With this announcement, it is to be hoped that the scourge of sociobiology will never again raise its ugly head. Now that it has been laid to rest, biology itself must now finally be exposed for what it is---a fascist concept.”

“It is not how many reindeer there are,” she continued, “but how they choose to live. The reindeer on St. Matthew Island could have lived like Ghandi, but instead they chose to live like Gates.”

Ms. May recommended that the environmental movement continue to follow its true mission---the inculcation of guilt for bad behaviour, and the pursuit of “good feelings” among its adherents by making trivial lifestyle changes rather than measuring their success by the achievement of meaningful concrete results.

“Self-righteous self-abnegation and the worship of green pie-in-the-sky technologies is the New Christianity,”

she exclaimed with buoyant pride. Making an obvious pitch to the social media generation, May continued,

“ You can continue to be a dope-smoking, lying adulterer and fornicating flake and be blessed, so long as you go vegan and give up your car.”

Citing the United Church of Canada as her model,

“The Church of Green is inclusive and diverse,”

Ms. May concluded. Moreover, it has been speculated that in keeping pace with evolving standards in the United Church, in the new ‘progressive’ Green Party even unqualified reindeer will not only be welcomed but ordained. (It is not as if the Green Party has set its leadership bar too high, is it?)

The impact of the name-change has already been felt across all North American campuses and Biology Departments, which are now faced with an imminent overhaul. In an arguably futile attempt to save the discipline, Biology Department heads all over North America are now calling their field the “The Sociology of Flora and Fauna” , and in some cases, “The Moral Philosophy of Natural Selection”. Eventually, however, it is expected that biology courses will soon fall under the rubric of “How- Zionism-Caused-the-Sixth Extinction-Event”. Such is the chill that has descended upon academic discourse in the wake of this announcement that when one professor was heard to remark that the fate of St. Matthew’s reindeer might have been related to their unchecked fecundity, his college was quickly censured by the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) following a complaint from a professor at the Women’s Studies department at Hampshire College. In her words,

“No one should be able to tell female reindeer what to do with their bodies.”

So it is all now official. There is enough lichen in the world to go around, if only it is shared equally and consumed responsibly. Breed on.

Tim Murray

November 22, 2012

Elizabeth May:

Now I don’t claim to be an A student baby or an authentic Green Party Leader either, and I ….

Don't know much about history,
don't know much biology.
Don't know much about a science book,
don't know much about the french I took.

But I do know that I love you,
and I know that if you love me, too,
what a wonderful sustainable world this would be.

PS Readers will understand that the quotes cited in the foregoing parody are fictional and made only to highlight the absurdity of predominate green ideology. They are the responsiblity of the author alone. Tim Murray

David Attenborough and other renowned conservation figures have urged PM Gillard to retain National Environment Powers. At the moment changes devolving major decision making to our growth-mad developer states are imminent. The writers of a letter to the Primeminister say that their concern arises particularly due to Australia being "one of a very few biologically mega-diverse developed countries on the face of this Earth. The array of natural ecosystems and their component species is simply breathtaking, making Australia one of the most important and exciting places in the world for the long-term conservation of biological diversity." See also this article which contains links to petitions etc.

Sir David Attenborough urges Prime Minister not to abandon National Environment Powers

Today, 23 November, 2012, 33 United Nations Environment Program Global 500 Laureates (elected to the UNEP Global 500 Roll of Honour in recognition of outstanding practical achievement in the protection of the environment) delivered Prime Minister Gillard a letter urging her not to abandon national environmental protection and devolve powers to state and territory Governments.

Among the signatories are Sir David Attenborough and five of the world’s most influential conservation biologists: Drs Paul and Anne Ehrlich from Stanford University, Dr Peter Raven, President Emeritus of the Missouri Botanical Gardens, Professor Tom Lovejoy from George Mason University in Washington DC, and Professor Norman Myers from Green College, Oxford University. These are the men and women - the pioneer whistle blowers, who told of the massive loss of species and habitats facing the planet, and of the threat of climate change - going back nearly 40 years.

Also signing on is Veit Koester, who successfully and brilliantly chaired the global negotiations for the Convention on Biological Diversity, the treaty that provided the “head of power” for the Commonwealth’s powerful Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, 1999 (EPBC Act). Joining the 33 signatories is prominent Australian Dr Don McMichael CBE, who chaired the inaugural Federal Biological Diversity Advisory Committee, which prepared the very first draft “National Biological Diversity Conservation Strategy” for Australia.

In their letter the Global 500 Laureates state: “We have been concerned to hear however that there are proposals in train to weaken the EPBC Act and to allow the states and territories to approve developments affecting Matters of National Environment Significance without any Commonwealth oversight. We believe this would be a retrograde step in relation to the development of environmental law in Australia, with significant and negative implications for the conservation of biological diversity and achieving ecologically sustainable development”.

The letter, organised by Humane Society International (HSI) Director and Global 500 Laureate, Verna Simpson, has been presented to the Prime Minister just weeks before the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) meets in early December, to discuss the ongoing administrative process for handing over Commonwealth environmental powers, which has a March 2013 deadline. The Government appears not to be listening to Australia’s professional environmental community, but this letter clearly indicates the global concern for the potential deterioration of effective national environmental regulation in Australia.

The Global 500 Laureates concluded: “The individual and organisational UNEP Global 500 Laureates below would like to offer our support for a continuation of your Government’s efforts to develop best possible policies and practices for the conservation of biological diversity through the maintenance of the current powers contained within the EPBC Act, and to avoid, at all costs, the devolution of such powers”.

You can read the full letter here: Letter entitled, "Strong national environmental protection laws".

See also this article which contains links to petitions etc.

Source

This article was based on a press release from the Humane Society International (HSI).
HSI concentrates on the preservation of endangered animals and ecosystems and works to ensure quality of life for all animals, both domestic and wild. HSI is the largest animal protection not-for-profit organisation in the world, with over 10 million supporters globally and has been established in Australia since 1994.

Kelvin Thomson, MP for Wills, has written to Prime Minister Gillard, asking her to consider and respond to the concerns of constituents about planned changes to the federal environment act. Have any other ministers done this? We would like to hear from them if so. See also this article which contains links to petitions etc.

This Friday, 7 December, the Federal Government plans to give away environmental assessment authority to the states. Candobetter readers should take any opportunity they can to avoid this devolution of our already semi-toothless legislation. Here is an opportunity to add your signature to a petition. There is also a Get-up campaign. Readers are invited to let us know of any other actions they are taking.Links to petitions etc inside.

What is the EPBC Act and why is it such a big deal?

Virtually the only functioning piece of environmental legislation in Australia is the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act (1999), or the EPBC Act. It is the only law that individual citizens can bring a complaint under. The state environmental laws require you to find an officer in a government department or some other rare organisation with 'standing' who will bring a complaint for you. If you have tried to do this you will realise how this is almost impossible. Wildlife organisations and carers see grotesque crimes daily and cannot interest state bodies.

Under the federal EPBC legislation, the Federal Environment Minister, Tony Burke, has responsibility for assessing and approving (or rejecting) major development that will impact our nationally important places and wildlife, such as our World Heritage areas, threatened species and nuclear actions like uranium mines or nuclear waste dumps.

Apparently, due to industry lobbying (notably from the Business Council of Australia) and without consulting the Australian public, the government is gutting these laws and handing over most, if not all, of these federal responsibilities over to the States.

This means that Premiers like Campbell Newman, Collin Barnet, Ted Bailieu, Barry O'Farrell, etc., will be left solely in charge of protecting our Environment and World Heritage areas like the Great Barrier Reef. Since power over land and water resides in the states and they make much of their money out of buying, selling and regulating these for profit, they have a vested interest in developing land. The states are notorious for ignoring environmental law in favour of big money and development.

December 7, 2012 is D-Day for Environment

On December 7th, the Prime Minister and Tony Burke intend to hand over their environment responsibilities to the states through the Council of Australian Governments (COAG). Recent hard-won environmental protection in Australia has only been possible when the Federal Government stepped in to overrule bad state government decisions. See, most recently, Tony Burke shows courage in giving NSW and QLD koalas threatened status As the Australian Greens note, "If the States were in charge of the environment, they would have damned the Franklin River, put oil rigs in the Great Barrier Reef and let Traveston Dam go ahead."

Make no mistake; fracking, massive open-cut coal mining, huge housing developments, desecration of the Kimberlies, cattle on the highlands, fragmenting, farming and selling off of national and regional parks - will all be on state agendas.

Environment groups and scientific bodies like the Wentworth Group all agree – this change, being rushed through by COAG at the behest of big business - is the worst thing to happen for environmental protection in Australia for thirty years.

Petition to sign

The Australian Greens have put out a petition to sign http://greensmps.org.au/content/petition/minister-burke-dont-hand-your-powers-states and share with your networks.

Get-up Campaign

http://www.getup.org.au/keep-federal-govt-enviro-powers Also asking for donations at Get-up and for a lot of information about you.

Disclaimer from Editor at Candobetter.net: Note, the petition is from the Australian Greens, some of whom have shamefully ignored population pressure from high immigration and have caused debate to focus on asylum seekers. They are now - oh so belatedly - calling on people to use them to support environmental laws. Despite these failings, the Australian public need to use this opportunity to try and defend their environmental legislation (which still needs to be much much stronger) as well as to use any other opportunities that may arise. So please consider signing. And similar for Get-up, which also ignores population and insists on getting a lot of information out of you which is no doubt useful to on-sell.

Source: Press release from the Australian Greens and the Humane Society International, and independent research. Contact was also attempted with the federal office of Environment Minister Tony Burke by phone and by email, but no-one was available to comment on the day that this article was written. If we receive a response to our email we will take it into consideration.

A left-wing environmentalist group opposed to all forms of racism and xenophobia has been able to get a national immigration referendum on the ballot in Switzerland.

Philippe Roch (R) from the Ecopop group.

The Environment and Population Association, or Ecopop group, successfully argued that overpopulation from massive immigration is putting undue pressure on Switzerland’s finite natural resources.

“The pressure on land, nature and the countryside is considerable, and quality of life is continuously deteriorating due to a lack of living space,” Ecopop member Philippe Roch told the BBC.

Roch is also a former director of Switzerland’s Federal Environment Office.

The group wants annual population growth through immigration capped at 0.2% and a tenth of foreign aid to be used for birth control measures abroad.

Ecopop members gathering signatures

Direct democratic action a right in Switzerland with referenda

More than 120,700 certified signatures, far above the minimum 100,000, were gathered to get the referendum on the ballot on November 2. Although no date for the vote has been set yet, should the initiative clear other administrative and legal hurdles, it will likely take place in 2015. ( For more on how Swiss direct democracy works and why this system would be desirable in Australia, see
"You can help bring Direct Democracy to Australia.")

Population numbers in Switzerland

Switzerland’s population has risen by some 15-percent since 1990. It currently has a population of eight million, with a quarter of them being foreigners.

“Switzerland currently has one of the densest populations on the planet, with 480 inhabitants per square kilometre in ‘Mittelland’,” or central Switzerland, Ecopop leader Andreas Thommen told AFP, insisting “this development is not at all sustainable in the long-term.”

The Swiss government re-imposed immigration limits on the so-called “A8? EU nations – Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia - last April. After the 2,000-a-year cap expired in 2011, numbers from those countries exploded to 6,000. Many from the relatively-poor countries are attracted to Switzerland due to its low unemployment rate, which is currently 2.9-percent.

Ecopop logo

Switzerland’s population has is 3.0-percent more now than it was in November 2011, due completely to immigration.

The right-wing Swiss People’s Party has also been able to get an immigration referendum on the ballot.

Ecopop was founded in 1971, with a mission of protecting Founded in 1971, Ecopop says its mission is to protect the environment by restricting immigration and slowing down population growth.

On November 6, 2012 it was reported that the Victorian government was cooling on the idea of another port for Hastings and instead its planners were casting their collective beady eye in the direction of Werribee. ("Government looks west for next port development," The Age, 6 Nov., p.6.) One imagines hope springing on the Mornington Peninsula as a dark shadow turns west to cast its pall on Werribeeans instead. But do we even need one new port?

At first gasp, if you have lived down on the Mornington Peninsula under the threatening shadow of a planned port for Hastings, you might tentatively hope that the government has actually called the dogs off. Then, if you have some conscience, you might think, "But why inflict the same on Werribee?" The people who live in Werribee are our fellow citizens.

Werribee is, it is true, heavily industrialised, however the area also has extensive wetlands that nature relies on. Worse, there are documents indicating associated plans for even more elaborate destruction for the wider coastal area which is of historic cultural significance in Victorian hearts, bearing the evocative name of Avalon:

"Transport Minister Terry Mulder had been briefed on a proposed ''master plan'' for the Avalon region, including a container port, an international airport, industrial development and a formula one track."

The Absurdity of multiple ports

But why are we even thinking of another port? When did state governments begin to think in terms of serial ports, one after another, in preparation for a huge increase in container traffic against a real backdrop of container traffic decline. It seems insane, unless you consider the desperation that affects people accustomed to a certain income who see the prospects of maintaining their corporate and private empires declining in a world where growth is going to become impossible to maintain. Over the past few years such people have convinced governments to use taxpayers' money to finance huge infrastructure projects - like desalination plants and massive tollways - of questionable value but involving enormous turnover for those involved. Ports are just another version of the tollways, tunnels and city apartment blocks template for raising cash from banks, investors and taxpayers. The key is to make the project sound inevitable and necessary. That's their game and the growth merchants don't have another one.

Jenny Warfe, of Blue Wedges, says,

How many ports do we really need? We have a massive port in Melbourne – with another $1.5 billion expansion planned for soon, a substantial port in Geelong, and smaller ones in Portland and Hastings."

She reminds us that all these ports occupy important, formerly publicly owned coastal assets. Every one imposes considerable negative impacts on its surrounding suburbs and waterways.

With regard to 'heavily industrialised Werribee', the greater part of the Western shoreline is largely untouched.

"The area that is being talked about for the ‘Bay West’ port is an internationally significant RAMSAR site, on which rely millions of migratory birds every year, just like Westernport," Jenny reminds us.

Only in September, Jenny compered a lecture in Melbourne from visiting US academic Richard Heinberg, who is a well-known author on the problem of oil-depletion, which many think is behind the wars we are involved in in the Middle East. Oil production or extraction is no longer keeping up with the demands of compound growth in human economic activity. Even though there is oil out there, it is harder and harder to get out of the earth, with high risks for investors and the environment. Although there is an industry for recovering oil from tar sands and even shale, what the public lack the education to understand is that the cost of extracting oil from such forms hardly leaves room for any profit and is deadly for the environment. Decline in abundant, cheap oil availability means that there won't be any new sustained 'growth' in production, trade and transport of cheap goods round and round the world. The price of production goes up as the availability of easily accessible oil goes down, so production must adjust downwards.

"In his recent Melbourne address, Heinberg warned that as we reach peak oil and peak everything else, we may not be exporting and importing so much, and surely not so much of the low cost high volume junk that fills up so many import containers at the moment, " comments Ms Warfe.

(Although 'peak oil' indicates a peak of production, where there is more oil than at any other time, there is a cliff on the other side, and that is where we are heading. In fact there are many indications that we have passed that peak.)

"Mr. Heinberg is right to be adamant that we should focus on getting population expansion and consumption levels under control and power DOWN not UP, " she says.

Nutty idea to increase trade infrastructure when trade is in decline

This is the most important message of candobetter.net and Jenny joins the dots well. There is no point in building new ports for declining trade.

Jenny suggests that these ideas for more ports are coming from old fossils in suits blowing $billions on the tired old ‘business as usual’ pipe-dream- which is this latest port proposal in a nutshell.

Instead of more of the same with the public expected to lie down and think of England, while pipe-dream addicted planners rifle through the public purse, as Ms Warfe sums up:

"We need funds and good minds with the capacity to deal with reality. We need different solutions for the very different future we and all species on Earth face."

Yes, we don't need a new port in Hastings and we don't need a new port in Werribee. They are both bad ideas. A formula one car racing track in the Avalon Region, in the light of declining oil and the need to conserve energy, is sublimely ridiculous. One can only interpret this suggestion as symbolically associated with the awful and tragic dependence of the Australian economy on the automobile industry (which also enables the suburban development industry). For anyone who had never thought of this, try ... um... driving... round some outer suburbs and you will see entire districts dedicated, not only to the sale and maintenance of new and used cars, but to marketing and retailing a range of associated paraphernalia, from deodorisers to window transfers to car brand-name wind sheeters. This is the outcome of colonial corporate thinking and the suppression of diverse local manufacturing activity. Our politicians are responsible.

Peninsula Port Plans have already cost the community dearly

Unfortunately and absurdly, even if the Mornington Peninsula is reprieved from a huge industrial port sector at Hastings, the future traffic predicted to be associated with the Port was used as an excuse to put a huge new tollway, which already scars substantial landscape and bushland. Westerfield heritage area and large parts of The Pines have been destroyed to build that road in preparation for traffic to and from Hastings (port), over years of protest by environmentalists. Even agreements to fence off predators from bandicoot areas in the Pines have since been renegged on with the special sums allocated arbitrarily diverted to other projects by Parks Victoria, according to Hans Brunner.

But do the authors of these huge projects even care, as long as someone makes a profit along the line? Costs will be borne by any investors that were counting on guaranteed tollway profits due to hugely increased volumes of traffic on the Peninsula. Such schemes are money floats for those who initiate them, but the chances of them paying down the line with oil depletion looming are minute, and the designers almost certainly knew this. They were probably taking advantage of public ignorance of resource supplies. See SEITA tollway using old data on oil prices.

At no stage either is it ever made clear to the public how closely political parties of all hues are associated with such massive land-development projects, via their business and investment arms. For an idea of how this works, look at Labor Resources, bearing in mind that this kind of activity, although on a grand scale in the Labor Party, also goes on in the other established parties with big budgets and major landed and investment assets.

There is more to these port projects than meets the eye of the casual observer.

The contest is international. This year it will focus on the human-ocean connection. The Marine Photobank is seeking images depicting human impacts on the ocean, its inhabitants and its resources, both restorative and destructive. First prize is a voyage for two aboard the National Geographic Endeavor to the Galapagos Islands with Lindblad Expeditions. There is also a second and third prize.

This awfully unsettling photograph by Terri Goss of a shark with a permanent hook in situ was the winner of last year's competition.

Conservation Photo contest launched to inspire Ocean Protection

SeaWeb’s Marine Photobank Partners with Lindblad Expeditions for Fifth Anniversary Contest to Shine Spotlight on Ocean Conservation through Photography

October 1, 2012 marked the launch of the fifth annual Ocean in Focus Conservation Photography Contest by SeaWeb’s Marine Photobank program. The goal of the contest is to inspire photographers, from hobby photographers to professional photographers, to care about the ocean and focus their lens on the true positive and negative human impacts on the marine environment.

The contest this year will focus on the human-ocean connection. The Marine Photobank is seeking images depicting human impacts on the ocean, its inhabitants and its resources, both restorative and destructive. The Ocean In Focus photo contest launches October 1, 2012 and will accept photos at www.marinephotobank.com through January 31, 2013 11:59pm U.S. Eastern Time. Finalists will be chosen based on the photo submissions and will be eligible to compete in the first grand prize photo essay competition for a chance to win an expedition to the Galapagos Islands courtesy of Lindblad Expeditions.

“This inspiring photo contest has generated remarkably compelling images from photographers all around the world,” said Dawn M. Martin, President of SeaWeb. “To celebrate the fifth year of the contest, we want to turn the lens back on to the photographers and the rich, motivating stories they tell with their photographs. The newly incorporated photo essay component will capture these stories and more-fully tell the tale of their encounters with the ocean.”

Following a review from a panel of judges representing the photography, ocean conservation and responsible travel communities, finalists will be announced in February 2013. Finalists will then be invited to submit 3-4 images for a photo essay of 400-600 words. The same panel of judges will judge the photo essays and the winner will receive recognition as SeaWeb’s Photographer Of The Year.

Finalists will take home a copy of renowned marine scientist, Callum Robert’s, recently released book, The Ocean of Life. One finalist, selected for the best overall image, will also receive a Solio Q-Cells solar charger for charging your devices in the field with the power of the sun. The grand prize package, awarded to the Photographer Of The Year, is a voyage for two aboard the National Geographic Endeavor to the Galapagos Islands courtesy of Lindblad Expeditions.

“We want to hear the stories behind these incredible images and give our contributing photographers a voice and an opportunity to tell others about the truths they have witnessed in the ocean,” said Devin Harvey, Manager of the Marine Photobank.

The photo contest launch coincides with the 2011 Ocean in Focus contest winner, Terry Goss’, voyage to the Galapagos Islands aboard the National Geographic Endeavor with Lindblad Expeditions. Goss received the grand prize in 2011 for his stunning underwater photograph of a blue shark with a rusted hook protruding from its lower jaw. The shark may not have been the intended target of the longline, demonstrating the sometimes-unavoidable impact of humans on ocean wildlife. Goss’ photo was shot with a Nikon D300, with a Nikkor 10.5mm fisheye lens inside an Aquatica housing, using two Sea & Sea YS90 strobes. Follow Goss’ travels through the Galapagos Islands through SeaWeb’s twitter account: www.twitter.com/SeaWeb_Org.

“It’s a true honor and an amazing opportunity to yet again be partnering with the Lindblad Expeditions team on this effort. Their expertise and passion to share stories from around the world is what, in the end, will save our ocean” said Martin.

The Marine Photobank inspires photographers to actively engage in ocean issues by capturing photographs of our ocean ecosystem. By turning their lenses in a different direction—one that informs and inspires positive action, photographers can help conserve marine species and their environments. Beautiful ocean photography has the power to inspire awe and raise awareness, but truly impactful photography will shine a light on the dark truths of human impact to the ocean and has the power to affect change. Many challenges lie ahead for the ocean and it will take even more dedication to turn the tide on our changing seas. This is the role photographers can play.

For dates and details on submitting photos, and other rules and regulations, visit www.marinephotobank.com. Find more information about the contest on Facebook: www.facebook.com/marinephotobank and through SeaWeb’s twitter account: www.twitter.com/SeaWeb_org. Use the official hash tag of the contest: #MPBphotocontest.

Lindblad Expeditions, specialists in expedition travel, voyages the world in alliance with National Geographic to inspire travelers to explore and care about the planet. Their renowned expedition team includes a Lindblad-National Geographic certified photo instructor on every voyage to help guests bring their skills to the next level. Join them on hikes, Zodiac rides, or on deck during a thrilling wildlife encounter. Swim and snorkel with sea lions, penguins and sea turtles. Discover nature in its purest form on one of the most significant travel experiences of your life. www.expeditions.com

The Marine Photobank, a project of SeaWeb, encourages ocean conservation by collecting and providing compelling, high quality marine photos, images and graphics at no cost for noncommercial use as well as for media use under special terms. The Marine Photobank aims to illuminate pressing marine issues and human impacts on the ocean through imagery. www.marinephotobank.org. Follow us at facebook.com/MarinePhotobank.

SeaWeb is the only international, nonprofit organization exclusively using the science of communications to fundamentally shift the way people interact with the ocean. To accomplish this important goal, SeaWeb convenes forums where economic, policy, social and environmental interests converge to improve ocean health. We transform knowledge into action by shining a spotlight on workable, science-based solutions to the most serious threats facing the ocean, such as climate change, pollution and depletion of marine life. We work collaboratively with targeted sectors to encourage market solutions, policies and behaviors that result in a healthy, thriving ocean. By informing and empowering diverse ocean voices and conservation champions, SeaWeb is creating a culture of ocean conservation. For more information, visit: www.seaweb.org, or follow us on Twitter: email and Facebook: SeaWeb_org.

The disingenuous who cannot refute your arguments often resort to sleight-of-hand alterations in terminology to make their case. Conflations are their stock in trade..... Lets not let our opponents get away with it.

This delightful cartoon, by Marco Marilungo Pictor, depicts a conflated Pinocchio, apparently overwhelmed by his own complexity, under the somewhat calculating regard of his inventor, which so seemed to suit this topic that I purchased it fromhttp://www.toonpool.com/cartoons/cartoon_47352

Definition

CONFLATION
con•fla•tion
noun \-?fl?-sh?n\
Definition: blend, fusion; especially : a composite reading or text

Examples:
First Known Use: 15th century

Synonyms: admixture, alloy, amalgam, amalgamation, cocktail, combination, composite, compound, blend, emulsion, fusion, intermixture, meld, mix, mixture, synthesis
Related Words: half-and-half; absorption, blending, coalescence, coalition, commingling, commixture, compost, concretion, homogenization, immingling, immixture, incorporation, integration, interfusion, intermingling, mergence, merger, merging, mingling; assortment, hash, hodgepodge, hotchpotch, jumble, medley, mélange, mishmash, motley, patchwork, potpourri, variety; accumulation, aggregation, conglomeration
Near Antonyms: component, constituent, element, ingredient
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The disingenuous who cannot refute your arguments often resort to sleight-of-hand alterations in terminology to make their case. Conflations are their stock in trade. They exploit a common weakness---our inability to notice nuances that make one word or one concept fundamentally different than another. Our failure to identify these subtle differences allow the polemicist to confuse the audience or the readership by blending two distinct ideas. Here are some classic examples of these deceitful tactics which confuse the issue:

Pro-Israel=anti-Arab
Anti-Zionism = anti-semitism
A critique of Islamic fundamentalism = Islamophobia
Well-founded fear=phobia
Tolerance=acceptance
Acceptance=approval
In-group altruism=nativism
Concern about cultural displacement=xenophobia
Opposition to human population growth = misanthropy
Pro-choice = Pro abortion
GDP= per capita GDP
Growth=Prosperity
Steady-state=stagnation
Anti-socialist = pro-capitalist
Ethnocentrism = racism
Opposition to cultural diversity= Opposition to racial or genetic diversity
All races are equal = all cultures are equal
Internationalism = Globalism
Internationalism = support for a borderless world
International cooperation = removing impediments to migration
Population growth=economic growth
Nimbyism=support for development elsewhere
Being left wing = support for environmental causes
Being right wing= being anti-environment
Equal opportunity == Equal results
No proof of discrimination=systemic racism
Equity=Equality
Social justice=egalitarianism
Climate skepticism=Climate denialism

And my personal favourite is (drum-rolls):
ANTI-IMMIGRATION=ANTI-IMMIGRANT

If more come to your mind, please suggest them .

Conflations are the inverse of false dichotomies. Instead of "either or", conflations blend polarities. The first is a case of binary thinking, the second is a case of lazy thinking. Lets not let our opponents get away with it.

Tim Murray
August 19, 2012

Bill McKibben has recently unveiled some new "terrifying math" about global warming. But there are other numbers that terrify me more. My mother used to tell me to stop worrying, because it is not the things we worry about that usually get us, but the things we don't see coming. I think she was right.

Bill McKibben recently wrote about the “terrifying math” of global warming:

Climate Change

A third of the summer Arctic ice is gone and oceans are 30% more acidic.
We are already three-quarters along the road to the two-degree increase that we have been told is the tipping point beyond which runaway temperature increases follow.
We are on pace to exceed the 565 gigaton carbon “budget” left to keep us under the tipping point in just 16 years.
We are planning to burn oil, gas and coal reserves that would exceed this carbon budget by a factor of five.
To keep “under budget”, we must keep 80% of known hydrocarbons in the ground.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/global-warmings-terrifying-new-math-20120719

Yes, those numbers sound truly terrifying alright. But try these on for size:

Population Overshoot

October 31, 2011
7 billion humans on Planet Earth.
A thousand times more people than what there were through most of human history.

More humans are born every day than there are primates in the world.
Each day the world adds 220,000 people to its burden (a Saskatoon, Saskatchewan every day). Each day each Canadian--or an American---consumes over 100 lbs of minerals, metals and fuels---all non-renewable.
Each day as the pool of affordable and accessible minerals, metals and fuels shrinks, the number of people making a claim on them grows.
Each year a Canadian consumes the equivalent of 25 barrels of oil.

These numbers are scary. And solid.

Realists know that there is a difference between a LONG emergency and a PERMANENT one, and know therefore, that there can be no real preparation for de-industrialization. They know that they can hide from marauding hordes in a bunker, or in a remote re-localized community, but they cannot hide from scarcity. And they know that governments will pull out all stops to keep the industrial machine running. In retrospect, environmental sensibilities will seem like a quaint middle class indulgence of a people who didn't know what real hardship was all about. We will drill in children’s graveyards if we think it will keep us warm at night.

Arctic ice can melt. But so can human flesh in a thermonuclear war---or freeze after one.
Vanishing ice can send temperatures soaring, but nuclear winter can send them plummeting.
An old bush pilot said to me that if your plane is aloft and you notice that your engine is on fire, you don't care about what the needle on your fuel gauge says. You have to focus on putting that fire out. First things first. We have to address scarcity.

Connect these dots

Connect these dots. 2010--the Chinese spend over $4 billion to buy 9% of Syncrude as a part of their determined effort to gain more control of the Alberta tar sands project. Then in the summer of 2011, they launch their first aircraft carrier in determined effort to build up their fleet and grow their military muscle. Then this summer they spent over $15 billion to purchase control of Nexen Corporation, paying 61% more than share value, to gain an even bigger foothold in the Tar Sands. Given the scale of this commitment, a pipeline to the Pacific coast to serve the Chinese market is a certainty. If not soon, then later. Environmental concerns will be cast aside.

Final dot. China---an emerging superpower, and the US, an increasingly desperate and fading superpower, both crave tar sands oil. Is this not reminiscent of the conditions which led the Japanese to launch the desperately foolish attack on Pearl Harbor? How ironic it would be if it was the United States that would be placed in Japan's position in 1941?

These are things that keep me awake at night, not Glikson’s or Hansen's speculations regarding sea levels 50 years from now.

Tinderbox

I feel that we are all sitting on a tinderbox, while across the world governments are stockpiling matches. As McKibben’s nightmare is unfolding with a quickening pace, mine has broken out into a sprint.

Let me summarize the forgoing perspective in point form:

1) The “down slope” experience is one of increasing scarcity.

2) Relocalization is just one moment in the down slope ( not the end condition).

3) Relocalized communities require isolation or insulation from roving pillagers, but there is no sanctuary from scarcity.

4) Governments are not going to help us get to sustainable communities. They are going spend every bit of monetary and natural capital trying to keep the overloaded system afloat.

5) The actions that concerned people (environmentalists) are taking to prevent the down slope are too weak to be meaningful.

6) In the end each person (each environmentalist) will desecrate everything to stay afloat.

7) You worry about rising waters and temperatures that will fry us. I worry about nuclear winter that will freeze us. But it is increasing scarcity that will trigger one of these two, and it is the problem that most deserves our focus.

8) Governments sold our resources to industry, and industry will sell them to the highest bidder. The lower bidder will resort to desperate measures to re-access lost resource streams.

9) The resulting conflict will drain resources from all both sides, resulting in further scarcity and death. Nuclear winter is the climate change that may kill us first.

Tim Murray
August 14, 2012

On Saturday 11 August I attended the "Stop the Supertanker Protest National Day of Action" at St Kilda Beach in Melbourne Victoria. There was a large group of mostly young people, well prepared with signs and activities designed to convey their message visually.

Today I attended the “Stop the Supertanker protest National Day of Action” at St. Kilda Beach being among the first to arrive just before 11.00a.m. Fairly quickly though a large group of mostly young people and some children gathered. They drew a large sign on the sand filling each letter with the plentiful debris found on the same beach: it read STOP THE SUPER TRAWLERS. While I was there –approximately 50 minutes - there were no speeches. The group was making a visible rather than audible statement and the protest was photographed by the media. It was great to see Kelvin Thomson MP at the rally expressing to me his deep concern about the absolutely qualitative difference in harvesting marine life between a super trawler and conventional fishing methods – the former leaving nothing in its wake.

To me an activity like the supertrawler's seems, as well as being totally undesirable from so many points so of view, also unsustainable in its industrial methods and scale and complete disregard for the marine environment. It is yet another sign that humans are living beyond the capacity of the Earth and its biosphere to reasonably sustain its load of humanity. I guess the word that comes to mind to describe this activity is 'obscene'. It seems all the more unacceptable as the ship – the Margiris comes all the way from Europe to its damage!

Didn’t make it to today’s protest?

Sign the petition against this at http://www.communityrun.org/petitions/stop-giant-fishing-trawler-in-tasmania

See also: Supertrawler repudiated by public opinion, Super Trawlers sucking last fish-stock from sea of 11&nbap;August.

PROTEST TODAY (Now!) 11 AM St Kilda Beach, behind Luna Park. See: http://stopthetrawler.net/national-day-of-action-to-stop-the-super-trawler/ So many threats to our oceans, bays and rivers….where to start? One of the most worrisome issues at present is the massive Super trawler Margiris on its way to Tasmania and set to start vacuuming up our mackerel and red bait fish stocks.

The Margiris is part of the heavily subsidized European trawler fleet, and is the subject of recent allegations of overfishing stocks in the South Pacific and off West Africa. The company Seafish Tasmania has proposed a joint venture with the Dutch owners of the vessel and they plan to catch 18,000 tonnes of small bait fish for freezing into 20 kg blocks and exporting to Nigeria for $1/kg for human consumption. Meanwhile, our major supermarkets are offering us Nile perch and various other tasteless species imported from Africa. How crazy is this?

If our government had the guts to say NO, this wouldn’t be happening. Please try to convince Federal Ministers Joe Ludwig (Fisheries) and Tony Burke (Environment) by sending emails as suggested by Save Our Marine Life-The Big Blue Army, at: http://www.saveourmarinelife.org.au For more interesting information see also Super Trawler heading our way http://www.westender.com.au/news/1342

Super Protest today (Saturday 11 Aug 2012)

If you care, please join the Stop the Supertanker protest National Day of Action this Saturday.

In Melbourne, it’s on at 11 AM at St Kilda Beach, behind Luna Park. See: http://stopthetrawler.net/national-day-of-action-to-stop-the-super-trawler/

Meanwhile back in Port Phillip Bay…

Whilst there wasn’t a peep in the mainstream media, Lloyd’s List Shipping News reported that the magnitude 5.5 earthquake that hit Victoria on 19th June triggered an environmental requirement for the Port of Melbourne Corporation to recheck its underwater toxic dump off Mordialloc for possible damage. We’ve heard nothing more since.

When then Federal Environment Minister Garrett gave his final approval for the Channel Deepening Project, the PoMC’s Environment Management Plan proposed annual visual checks of the dump site- and presumably a requirement for checks after unusual events such as an earthquake.

What is sadly missing from the EMP is any obligation to regularly test the water quality on and near the dumpsite for possible leaching of pollutants and toxicants from the +3 million tonnes of contaminated and toxic sludge PoMC dumped there from its Yarra dredging extravaganza.

Meanwhile back in Westernport…..

Local Liberal MP Neale Burgess is promising depressed local businesses that 4000 ongoing jobs would be created for the Hastings area from the State government’s pumped up proposals for the Port of Hastings. See: http://www.peninsulaweekly.com.au/news/local/news/general/hastings-port-a-goer-say-libs/2611198.aspx

That’s amazing, because we have learned that container operations at the Port of Brisbane are run remotely from Sydney, with container movement being entirely done by robotics. Apparently, global technology company Cargotec has acquired advanced software as well as 23 highly-skilled workers for the automation of straddle carriers from Asciano (parent company of Patricks who are also the operators of Port of Hastings). …….So what are the other 3977 workers that Hastings has been promised going to be doing??

Add to this Minister Napthine’s idea of driverless trucks trundling up and down to and from the Port of Hastings and it makes you wonder then what the supposed 4000 jobs in the Port of Hastings will entail. Poor old Hastings shop keepers hanging out for more business might be in for a shock.

Check out this link to the ABC TV Big Ideas program which talks about robotics in port operations. http://www.abc.net.au/tv/bigideas/stories/2012/06/25/3530523.htm

Blue Wedges Editor

See also: Super Trawler protest photos of 12 August.

How the Growth Lobby Stole The Minds Of The Digital Generation

Above---a PC Pod has identified you as no friend of the CBC. “Racist! Racist!”, she screams. “Assimilate him! Assimilate him!” she shouts as a mob of thought police chase after you.

It is a Canada where the unimaginable becomes real and the impossible becomes possible. They’re here! They’re here I tell you! Why can’t you see the Digital Generation has been stolen and replaced by replicas who look like real Canadians but are in fact programmed to follow an anti-Canadian agenda?

Your loved ones---your children and grandchildren may be next! Don’t let them go to sleep! Don’t let them be captured by the social media! Don’t let them take liberal arts courses and be transformed into mindless multiculturalists who robotically chant the PC line. Maybe your kids have already been taken! When they return home for a semester break, look for clues. Look into their vacant eyes, and if they say things like “All cultures are equal”, or “It is all relative” , “What’s a Canadian anyway”, or “The only true Canadians are First Nations people”, or “No one is illegal”, or “I am offended” or “I consider myself a citizen of the world”----you know that these are not your kids, but the agents of an alien force bent on your assimilation. Run! Run now! Don’ t let them take you!

Maybe I should get out of here while the getting is good. I could flee this country or get out of town, because being intellectually neutered and living life as a left-wing pod is no life at all. I am afraid to fall asleep or visit my politically-correct doctor. I can imagine what he will say---it will be like the screenplay from "Invasion of the Body Snatchers":

Tim: Doctor please. Let me leave the city!

Doctor: You don't have to leave the city. Nothing changes. You can have the same life.

Tim: But what happens to me if I accept the liberal PC media consensus?

Doctor: You'll be born again into an untroubled world, free of anxiety, fear, hate....

Tim: Doctor, you're killing me! Wait....

Doctor: That's not true. Your mind and memories will be totally absorbed. Everything remains intact.

Tim: What is this supposed to do?

Doctor: It's just a mild sedative to help you sleep.

Tim: I hate you. You and everyone of the slimy NDP-Sierra green-left clique!

Doctor: We don't hate you. There's no need for hate now... or love. Especially love for one's own culture and nation. You will come to accept Diversity, the word we prefer to use to describe the assimilation and control of people like you, people who have not accepted globalization and the ideology of the occupying forces and the monoculture of money, disguised as it is by fake pluralism.

Tim: There are people who will fight you. Patriots. Those who cherish Western values and their Euro-Canadian heritage. People who want to defend our natural environment from the continuing onslaught of immigration-driven population growth. They'll stop you!

Doctor: In an hour... you won't want them to. Don't be trapped by old concepts. You're evolving into a new life form---a gullible liberal, a herd animal who, rather do his own research, relies upon the filtered information from the CBC, Commondreams.org, Avaaz.org , Huffington Post and Sierra Club newsletters. Come and watch. We came here from a dying world. Europe. The Frankfurt School to be precise. We are Cultural Marxists, parasites dedicated to the transformation and displacement of native species we invade and the habitat upon which they depend. We drift through Western society from nation to nation, pushed on by the solar winds (a pie-in-the-sky energy source funded by taxpayer dollars). We adapt... and we survive. The function of life is survival. If you don't like our principles, we will find new ones for you.

The Invasion of the Body Snatchers----coming to a theatre near you!

This can’t be real. This must be fiction. This can’t be happening. The take-over of a nation, the take-over of a generation, converted into an army of Quislings who revel in their own colonization. Self-righteous Red Guards looking for signs of disobedience and offensive speech, eager to swarm and denounce you for what you are, a relic of the counter-revolution harbouring parochial thoughts about independent nationhood and governments that put the needs of its own citizens above those who would displace them for profit! Once I felt comfortable in the country of my birth---but now I feel that I am a stranger among men. They look like men---but they act like they have no balls! They’re pods!

Help! Help! No, no, let me go! Take your hands off me! I don’t want to be re-educated! No! No! I don’t want a sedative! Don’t inject me with a dose of the CBC or the Globe and Mail! Not that! Kill me if you have to, but I don’t want to live like a vegetable!

Somebody get me out of here! Somebody turn off the CBC! Why doesn’t anyone believe me? Tell me that this is a nightmare!

Tim Murray

July 31, 2012

The Rio+20 global environment conference in June aimed to set the environment agenda for the next 20 years. The consensus was that Rio delivered virtually nothing. The pre-agreed outcome document ‘The Future We Want’ is a 49-page wish list of clichés and aspirations, but it does not address or respond to the fundamental issues needing action at all. It failed completely to acknowledge the central importance of unsustainable population growth on a planet of rapidly diminishing resources. The blog gives a one-page summary.

Motherhood statements, no family planning

The outcome document for the Rio+20 environment summit in June 2012 is 49 pages long. Some 23,917 words. Women were mentioned in less than 0.01 percent of the text. And only two of the 283 sections addressed women's needs for family planning.

Nothing concrete came out of the closing day of Rio+20, though countries have agreed in principle to work towards setting up new 'sustainable development goals', The world has agreed to a set of new ‘sustainable development goals’, says Caroline Spelman, the UK’s Environment Secretary. Her priorities will be on the sustainable development goals. Between now and September there will be a lot of preparation for a UN meeting which will try to choose which thematic areas the goals should focus on. For the UK, the three priorities would be energy, water and food. (Not population of course, the underlying driver)

The Prince of Wales in video to Rio conference 2012:

“Like a sleepwalker, we seem unable to wake up to the fact that so many of the catastrophic consequences of carrying on with “business-as-usual” are bearing down on us faster than we think, already dragging many millions more people into poverty and dangerously weakening global food, water and energy security for the future,” he said. “It is, perhaps, a trait of human nature to act only when the worst happens, but that is not a trait we can afford to rely on here. Once the worst does happen, I am afraid that this time around it will be too late to act at all.”

“The international community needed to be better informed on the facts otherwise it will be faced with “panicked responses to crises that could have been avoided.”

Mathis Wackernagel, President Global Footprint Network

Today, humanity uses the equivalent of 1.5 planets to provide the resources we use and to absorb our emissions. The majority of countries and states operate their economies without tracking the ecological resources they use against what they actually have. It is like flying a plane without a fuel gauge, and it affects everything from what you pay at the grocery store to the type of world you and your children will live in.

Dr. William E. Rees, ecological economist and former director of the University of British Columbia’s School of Community and Regional Planning in a blog June 12, 2012:

“The Use and Misuse of the Concept of Sustainability.”

“The concepts of ‘sustainable development’ and ‘sustainability’ continue to be subverted, distorted and otherwise misused in the ongoing political debates concerning global change and economic development. Society continues to be in deep denial of fundamental facts pertaining to contemporary biophysical reality and the increasingly global socio-cultural context within which the human universe is unfolding."

After Rio, we know. Governments have given up on the planet

George Monbiot, The Guardian 25 June 2012:

It is, perhaps, the greatest failure of collective leadership since the first world war. The Earth's living systems are collapsing, and the leaders of some of the most powerful nations – the United States, the UK, Germany, Russia – could not even be bothered to turn up and discuss it. Those who did attend the Earth summit in Rio last week solemnly agreed to keep stoking the destructive fires: sixteen times in their text they pledged to pursue "sustained growth", the primary cause of the biosphere's losses.

Four scientists at the Sydney Royal Botanical Gardens have won important research funding to study cycads, marine algaes, Australian mints and a carnivorous bladderwort plant. Cycads, the descendants of the giant ferns we associate with dinosaurs are now menaced by human population growth, expansion and activities in Australia and elsewhere. Dr Oliver Sachs made cycads famous in The Island of the Colorblind, in his study of one species' association with a fatal neurological disease that became a leading cause of death in Guam, but world-wide and in Australia, cycads need humans to start caring about them.

Four young scientists based at Sydney’s Royal Botanic Garden have won awards worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in major science grants for their work on cycads, marine algaes, Australian mints and the prey-capture mechanisms of carnivorous bladderworts. The scientists are Dr Nagalingum, Dr Trevor Wilson, Yola Metti, and Dr Richard Jobson.

Their work is in collaboration with Dr Alan Miller, Dr Barry Conn (Royal Botanical Gardens and Domain Trust) and Dr Murray Henwood (University of Sydney).

Dr Nagalingum and Australian Cycads

Dr Nagalingum (pictured above and at end of article) has won a prestigious Winston Churchill Memorial Trust Fellowship for her work in cycad conservation genetics in overseas laboratories. Cycads are listed as the most endangered plants and most likely victims of a mass extinction caused by humans. There are studies for the cycads of Tonga, Japan, Guan and Fiji, but information about Australian cycads is very limited. Dr Nagalingum intends to develop skills for cycad conservation here. She wants to use her knowledge to inspire young people to become scientists and to train younger scientists, as well as to raise awareness of the problem of cycad conservation. (More about cycads and Dr Nagalingum at end of article.)

As well as Dr Nagalingum’s significant achievement, three of the youngest new scientists based at the National Herbarium of NSW at the Royal Botanic Garden have brought in over $500,000 through the highly competitive Australian Biological Research Study (ABRS) grant scheme – including salaries for two three-year postdoctoral positions.

“The funding goes towards three projects that will help the NSW Government and the Royal Botanic Gardens & Domain Trust (RBG&DT) meet our goals to contribute to understanding and conserving Australian plant biodiversity and as these grants are highly competitive, success indicates how well regarded these workers are nationally,” commented Ms Parker, the NSW Environment minister.

Yola Metti and marine algae

For one project Yola Metti, in collaboration with Dr Alan Miller, will investigate the Laurencia complex - a group of common red algae or seaweeds.

These seaweeds are very important in near coastal ecosystems in temperate and tropical parts of the world and provide food, oxygen and shelter to a vast array of organisms including fish and worms. The group of algae contains approximately 170 known species and Australia is a major centre of diversity with 61 identified species.

The coastline along the bottom half of Australia, including most of the New South Wales coast, is the world’s most diverse algae zone – making us custodians to all this diversity.

“Our fisheries and natural ecosystems wouldn’t survive without it,” the Minister noted.

“This important three year study by Yola Metti and Alan, in collaboration with many overseas workers, could lead to doubling or tripling the number of known species and will make an important contribution to our knowledge of Australia’s marine flora biodiversity.”

Dr Trevor Wilson and Australian mints

The second ABRS grant awarded is for a three year study of Australian native mints. Dr Trevor Wilson, the principle investigator will work in collaboration with Dr Barry Conn (RBG&DT) and Dr Murray Henwood (University of Sydney) to undertake the country’s first rigorous comprehensive revision of the subfamily Prostatantheroideae (Lamiaceae, the mint family). The mint family, which also includes herbs such as oregano, is particularly diverse in Australia.

Dr Richard Jobson and the Carnivorous bladderwort

The third ABRS grant was received by Dr Richard Jobson. In this three year project he will study all 62 Australian species of the carnivorous bladderwort genus Utricularia.

Dr Jobson said a well resolved phylogeny will shed light on the evolution of the carnivorous suction bladder-traps that are possessed by all species.

“These extraordinary modified leaves have evolved for capture of small aquatic prey, thereby sustaining the plants in nutrient deficient habitats,” Dr Jobson said.

Cycads and the dinosaurs, Cycads and us

Many of us picture cycads as giant ferney backdrops for dinosaurs. Dr Nagalingum says, "There were cycads back then, but what we have today are not from that era. Most of the ones around at the time of the dinosaurs (64 million years ago) became extinct. We do not know why. The fossil record is lacking . What we study today are from a new suite of species that originated 10-12 million years ago. Like their ancestors, these more recent cycads are often dramatic looking ferney and spikey plants, some of them producing massive cones 50 to 100 cm in size.

Some cycads are also poisonous, producing neurotoxins. Australian aboriginal women found a way to get rid of the toxins and use the plants for food. They used to leave them in dilli bags hanging in a stream for two weeks, after which the toxins leached out. In South America similar practices prepare some cycads for use in tortillas."

Neurologist Oliver Sacks, famed for his investigations of unusual neurological conditions (The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, etc.), wrote about his studies in the US island territory of Guam in 1993 of lytico-bodig, a common fatal, progressive neurodegenerative disease there, which causes paralysis, dementia and catatonia. Some believe that lytico-bodig is caused by eating the seeds of cycads or the flesh of bats that concentrate the associated neurotoxin from cycad meals and others believe a virus is implicated. More on this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lytico-Bodig_disease

Cycads have not entirely internalised the process of photosynthesis. They have a symbiotic relationship with photosynthesising cyanobacteria in their roots, which also help them to access nitrogen from the atmosphere. One kind (Welwitschia mirabilis)lives for one hundred years and only produces two leaves. Because cycads grow so very slowly and prefer the tropics, they are greatly menaced by human population growth, economic expansion and industrial activity. Because they prefer tropical to subtropical climates and dislike frost, Australian cycads are concentrated in the North of Australia with some representatives in northern NSW. We do not know how they may respond to climate change but because their circumstances are so fragile we need to do everything we can to promote and protect them.

All three ABRS projects will provide treatments for the Flora of Australia or the Algae of Australia. More detail about these and other award winning scientists at the Royal Botanical Gardens in NSW can be found here: http://www.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/welcome/feature_stories/Outstanding_success?SQ_DESIGN_NAME=printer_friendly

The Stable Population Party Australia is reaching out to members and sympathisers in a series of networking events across Australia. Should be interesting and fun to meet like-minded people and help to organise a coordinated electoral response to the growth lobby that has taken over our country. (Candobetter Ed.)

Invitation to all sympathisers

A message from William Bourke, National Convenor of Stable Population Party of Australia:

We'd like to welcome members and non-member supporters to Stable Population Party networking events across Australia.
These social events present a great opportunity to engage with like-minded people on sustainability and population matters.

Each event will run for around 3 hours & include:

- Party update
- Opportunity to meet current candidates
- Opportunity to meet state coordinators to discuss policies, campaign support and expressions of interest in candidature
- Opportunity to purchase lunch/dinner & beverages

Details:

NSW

12pm on Saturday 2 June @ Edinburgh Castle Hotel, Sydney (L1, Lounge Bar):

http://www.edinburghcastlehotel.com.au

Queensland

6pm on Friday 8 June @ E'cco Bar, Brisbane:

http://www.eccobistro.com/ecco-bar.html

Victoria

12pm on Saturday 16 June @ Richmond Club Hotel, Richmond (L1, Balcony Bar):

http://www.richmondclubhotel.com.au

WA

12pm on Saturday 23 June @ The Court Hotel:

http://www.thecourt.com.au

ACT

12pm on Sunday 24 June @ The Kingston Hotel (Red Room):

73 Canberra Avenue, Kingston

For planning purposes, please RSVP ASAP by replying to this eNews or contact us through our website: CLICK HERE

Networking events: NT, SA & Tas

Would you like to attend a networking event in Darwin, Adelaide or Tasmania in July?

If so please contact us ASAP to express your interest. You can reply to this eNews or contact us through our website: CLICK HERE

Your support is vital...

Our grassroots community party relies on its members and supporters to make these events a success. We look forward to seeing you there!

Kind regards

William Bourke
National Convenor
On behalf of the national committee
STABLE POPULATION PARTY
www.populationparty.org.au

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