Rod Quantok

Hi, we are Michael Bayliss and Rod Quantock from Sustainable Population Australia & our mission is to create a web series called 'Tough Crowd'.  This ‘first of its kind’ project will be made for Australians from all walks of life, especially those who are keen in participating in an open dialogue around one of the most interesting, complex and often controversial of issues: POPULATION.

Rod Quantock is a comedian of 50 years standing as well as a tireless front line environmental warrior.  Off the heels of the East West Link, campaign he has just finished his sold out stand up comedy show 'Happy Birthday To Me' for the Melbourne Comedy Festival. His many contributions to society have earned him a Medal of the Order of Australia.

Michael Bayliss is an environmental and social justice campaigner with a background in post growth economics and sustainable town planning.  He is also Communications Manager for Sustainable Population Australia  (SPA), a member driven environmental organization which works on many fronts to encourage informed public debate about how Australia and the world can achieve an ecologically, socially and economically sustainable population.

Population is an issue that affects each and every one of us, but it can be a thorny subject to talk about over the dinner table!  Many people have different opinions on the issue.  For example, should we be having small or large families?  How many people can Australia and our capital cities support?  Could we solve the problem by moving to the country or building more high rises in our cities?  Should we have open borders or should we review our migration policies?

'Tough Crowd' wants to explore all these tough questions and more.  Rod Quantock will host a series of four 10 minutes episodes as he interviews a range of Australian comedians and entertainers to discuss their own experiences and challenges around discussing the issue among their friends, family and the wider community.

'Tough Crowd' will also interview key members of the public who will offer unique viewpoints to this conversation.  Examples include people who have chosen not to have children and the reasons why they came to their decisions. This may also include overseas born people on their ideas on what Australia's migration policy should look like.  If the project expands, we would also be keen to interview politicians, refugees, and indigenous activists who have strong views on the issue. Further possibilities could include open discussions between child free people and those with large families and the reasons why they reached their decisions.

'Tough Crowd' will have a public screening in Melbourne followed by a publically available web series.  It is our mission that it is possible to have a conversation around population that is entertaining, laid back, insightful - and even funny! 

'Tough Crowd' is seeking funding to supplement the cost of video, sound and editing equipment, for the production of the video shoot, to financially compensate people being interviewed, venue hire for the series including the public screening and for advertising costs to promote the series.

We think this is a new and exciting project with much potential and possibility. We hope you think so too! We can't make this happen without the help the help of our supporters and kindly strangers alike, so we’d love to have you on board.

Led by Rod Quantock and organised by Moreland Community Against the Tollway, the Children's March for the Animals drew a concerned crowd despite the pouring rain, to raise awareness of the serious threat the East-West tollway poses to the Melbourne Zoo. It is proposed to be built at around 40 metres from the zoo wall (pictured below the video).

Support Julianne Bell's efforts in legal battle to defeat EastWest link

Of course, ongoing thanks and support are in order as well for the herculean efforts of Ms Julianne Bell, founder of Protectors of Public Lands Victoria and Royal Park Protection Group, to save the Park and the Zoo, notably her almost single-handed mounting of and daily attendance at the current monumental and very expensive legal battle in this effort. (Direct deposit of donations can be made to Protectors of Public Lands Victoria Inc. at MECU BSB 313 140 Account No 23145714. or to the "Royal Park Protection Fighting Fund": MECU: BSB 313 140 Account no. 23145824. (Ring MECU for any queries on 132888) )

Respect our exotic zoo community of animals

Animals need their sleep and not to be subjected to more unnatural noise! Habitat is shrinking throughout the world and we owe those exotic animals we have bred and kept in captivity this respect.

Speaker, Michael Petit, in the video calls on Melbourne Zoo to do their own study of projected noise levels and not to passively rely on what they are fed in terms of information by the people in charge of the EastWest Link project.

At the ceremony at the Zoo a petition was delivered to Ms Jenny Gray, CEO of Zoos Victoria. Rod Quantok read out the message of support of the 22 community organisations who had advised Protectors of Public Lands VIC that they oppose the East West Link and its impact on the Melbourne Zoo. A message from Dr Marc Bekoff, Professor Emeritus of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology of Colorado University in the USA and co-author with the famous Dr Jane Goodall of books on children and animals, along the same lines was also read out. PPL VIC and MCAT will be writing to Ms Gray and to the Premier with our combined message plus the names of supporting groups.

Why is Tony Abbott prepared to fund this monstrosity against the people's objections?

Candobetter notes that Australian Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, is insisting that his government will provide billions to build this unnecessary, almost useless, and hated toll-way. This willingness to fling taxpayers money at the unwanted EastWest Link whilst he is preparing Australians for barbaric cuts in health and welfare is an insult to citizens. What can the reason be except to transfer our remaining wealth to the developers, who are making our lives hell.

"I am just amazed at the breadth and the depth of interest and knowledge about planning in groups like this, so I don't understand - given that - how the government gets away with what it does."(Prof. Michael Buxton)

Metropolitan Planning Strategy for Melbourne - Con Job or for Real?

In contrast to the arrogant demeanor of the panel at the Wheeler Center (described at "We REALLY need to talk about Melbourne Planning ..."), Michael Buxton addressed an audience of activists and concerned public from Defenders of Public Lands Victoria and stated:

"Looking at some of the faces here, lots of you know a lot about the Metropolitan Strategy as it exists, and have done lots of work in planning. So I am just amazed at the breadth and the depth of interest and knowledge about planning in groups like this, so I don't understand - given that - how the government gets away with what it does. There is kind of something wrong in the way we all collaborate and mobilize, and I don't know how to get around that because the development community is brilliant at getting around it. It has its paid 'peak groups', like the Property Council, the Urban Development Institute. And they lobby and they walk into the Premier's office - and you all go and do it, you know, going up to Canberra in your own time - it's so much harder for you. But, somehow, keep at it, because it's incredibly important."

Signs of Growth Lobby infiltration in audience at this meeting?

At this otherwise excellent meeting, conducted by courageous members of Protectors of Public Lands Victoria Inc., it seemed that pro-development people may have secreted themselves in the audience to quell attempts to address the problem of the Victorian Government's promotion of high immigration by making it sound as if talking about immigration numbers was somehow indecent. It isn't. The government, the mainstream media, and the property development lobby never stop talking about it. It is out there in the public domain. It is core political business. Two people seem to have led this muzzling from the audience, which, sadly, appeared to be successfully intimidated or confused as to what was wanted of them.

There could be another explanation as well - that people have become confused by ambiguous media coverage of Dutch MP Geert Wilders' visit and now fear that criticism of any immigration will stigmatize them. The Growth Lobby, which owns and runs Australian public and commercial media, is easily able to ensure that coverage of such events benefits their cause. The aim is to restigmatize criticism of high immigration numbers by confusing it with criticism about ethnicity. This needs to be sorted out, pronto.

How come business, media and government can rabbit on continuously about immigration but 'we' can't?

As Michael Buxton says in his videoed speech (cited above), "there seems to be something wrong in the way we collaborate and organize." What is glaringly wrong is that the growth lobby members, including the government, the mainstream media, and the property development lobby, all talk non-stop about immigration and population growth but still manage to make enough citizens feel that they have no right to do so, thus totally undermining every effort to stop overpopulation and overdevelopment. There is something very wrong when planning activist groups fail to support each other's leaders, simply caving into intimidation by faceless infiltrators. Factionalisation of planning activist groups, with some cliques doing deals with government and purporting to represent the wider majority, whilst selling others down the river, is just what the government and the developer groups want. Our environment and democracy is too important to be sacrificed for narrow political ambition.

Resolution Re Metropolitan Planning Strategy for Melbourne (MPSM)

At the Annual General Meeting of Protectors of Public Lands Victoria Inc. held on 23 February 2013 at the Flemington Community Centre in Flemington the Metropolitan Planning Strategy for Melbourne (MPSM) was considered and discussed. It was moved that the resolution of this meeting be sent as a submission to the Planning Minister and the Ministerial Advisory Committee on MPSM. Here is the resolution:

Motions:

That this meeting considers that:
1. The Metropolitan Planning Strategy for Melbourne should concentrate on maintaining and enhancing Melbourne’s liveability and sustainability, emphasizing the need to control carbon emissions, to provide for the effects of climate change, and to plan for peak oil and food security, acknowledging that social and economic well-being depend on a sustainable environment.
2. To maintain and enhance Melbourne’s livability and sustainability the following highly valued but threatened assets need better protection and expansion/enhancement:
• Public open spaces, parks, gardens
• Green wedges, including open space for environmental conservation, agriculture and recreation
• Our residential streets and suburbs
• Heritage
• Natural environment and biodiversity, urban parks and reserves, nature strips and private gardens
• Recreation and other community facilities
• Shopping centres (which are threatened by proposals to allow supermarkets in commercial and industrial centres);
3. More - and more mandatory - not less, regulation of developers is needed. (The Advisory Committee has suggested we should “move away from regulation” as the primary means of achieving planning outcomes, but we are concerned that this will disempower communities and Councils.);
4. Urban sprawl needs to be curbed with no more development in the growth corridors until adequate infrastructure is provided to service existing and proposed outer suburbs: developers should pay for infrastructure;
5. Infrastructure planning and provision should focus on improving public transport, particularly rail projects, including the lines to Rowville, Doncaster, Tullamarine and Epping and not on freeways such as the East-West Link freeway/tollway;
6. Melbourne’s green edge should be strengthened by:
• Protecting the green wedges for non-urban uses including parkland, environmental conservation and biodiversity, agriculture, recreation, open space, landscape and heritage values
• A clearly defined, permanent Urban Growth Boundary that makes clear where urban Melbourne ends and rural areas begin
• Retention of S. 173 agreements to allow Council to curb future subdivision and inappropriate uses;
7. More rigorous governance provisions are needed to prevent vested interests taking priority over the best interests of the community, including more weight to local planning schemes and a ban on political donations from developers;
8. The Planning Zones Review should be extended to allow adequate time for community consultation and for consideration to be given to curbing current discretionary uses that have been used as loopholes to allow inappropriate uses into green wedges and other zones; and
9. Protectors of Public Lands (Vic) is authorised by the meeting to write to the Minister for Planning and to the Advisory Committee for the MPSM conveying the resolution.

Moved: Rosemary West, Green Wedges Coalition (GWC)
Seconded: Julianne Bell. Protectors of Public Lands Victoria Inc. (PPL VIC)

Resolution carried unanimously after a several amendments were made.

If Victorian Labor is to be epitomised in its wholesale profiteering of Melbourne's heritage, it is the carving up of Kew Cottages 90 acres, which for decades on the prominent Yarra River's prominent hilltop bend was home to Victoria's mentally handicapped, the socially unwanted, the 'too-difficult' vulnerable members of Melbourne's community. It was Melbourne's Bedlam and society labelled them 'mad' and banished them to 'Kew' up on the hill, behind the big wall. Now the Victorian Government is profiting from decades of neglect of many of its most vulnerable.

If Victorian Labor is to be epitomised in its wholesale profiteering of Melbourne's heritage, it is in the carving up of Kew Cottages 90 acres, which for decades on the prominent Yarra River bluff was home to Victoria's mentally handicapped, the socially unwanted, the 'too-difficult' vulnerable members of Melbourne's community. It was Melbourne's Bedlam and society labelled them 'mad' and so banished them to 'Kew' up on the hill, behind the big wall. The State originally called it 'Willsmere Hospital', but long branded by other familiar names like 'Kew Cottages', 'Kew Asylum' and 'Yarra Bend Lunatic Asylum'
Historic photo of patients outside Willsmere Hospital

Willsmere Hospital represents a depressing chapter of mental health neglect and abuse in Victoria's history. It was originally constructed in 1848. It soon became the first of three major 'institutions' across Victoria set up to house and care for the diggers of the Victorian gold fields facing health problems and lacking family support to help them.
Despite housing up to 950 odd high-care patients (including children),
Willsmere had been shunned by government for attention, funding and care for decades. It was dark, depressing and Victorian, if not Dickensian.

"There are some bathrooms which would not even rate as car washes, made of concrete and corrugated iron and coldness, where one floor caved in last year; corridors awash with the energy of people out of time; corners out of Dickens, so backward and oppressive.

A shed down the hill by the bitumen where they go when it rains is a cage out of a very old zoo where young men charged with psychosis charge up and down and round and round like angry old bears in a pit. All is lost in these quarters. They stamp the place as a village of the damned. Yes, surely such sights and sounds belong to another planet. Kew is this."[The Age, 1973]

In a special report in The Age newspaper 14th June 1973 by Ben Hills and John Larkin entitled 'The Minus Children' evidence of the systemic neglect at Kew Cottage’s was cited by its superintendent at the time Dr. Gary McBrearty:

"(1) There is a maximum of 48 children in some wards and 35 minimum. What it should be is 20 and 12.

(2) There are four full-time and two part-time occupational therapists. There should be 20 full time.

(3) According to Dr. McBrearty, Kew “is a long way away from a full staff.”

(4) It would be better for Kew to be autonomous rather than its present situation as a small unit in an expanse of bureaucracy.

(5) There are only two psychologists on the staff. There should be at least four.

(6) Wards estimate they need two regular cleaners. At present there’s only one, irregular."

State neglect culminated in the tragic fire of 1996 in which nine young patients tragically died. All the while the pollies have splurged $80 million of taxpayers funds renovating Victoria's Parliament House and $25,000 on a table for the Premier’s dining room.

The subsequent carving up of Kew Cottages has been the epitome of the Melbourne culture of pure immoral greed of government and its chosen developer, Walker Corporation.

In the carve up they are killing and ripping out hundreds of mature eucalypts so they can tightly wedge in as many kit homes (labelled 'townhouses') as they can, to maximise profits, so they can flog 'em off for one or two million a pop. Madness!

Of course the beneficiaries are the Victorian Government, profiting from its neglect of Willesmere and from land sales, along with the Walker Corporation et al., which profit from the kit home sales. Everyone else loses out.

Kew loses out with increased congestion. The trees lose out. We lose the trees. Melbourne's skyline loses out. Kew's landmark hill is set to emulate the industrial density of nearby Richmond - overpriced modular townhouses with the , DKO, told to pack 'em in as tight as you can and kid the buyers they look 'St Kilda-Elwood style'.

Of course the Willsmere patients lose out AGAIN. They've been rebranded 'residents' and either wedged into tighter barracks or re-located ('banished').

Does the pocketing developer-company, in bed with Spring (Grub) Street, give a toss?
This era for Victoria is Brumby's Bulemia, which history will acknowledge as a time of mad social disorder, destruction of Melbourne's heritage, and the perpetuation of Melbourne's 'haves' and 'have nots'.

The history of the treatment of mental health by the Victorian Government and indeed by state governments across Australia has been deplorable and Dickensian. Then after the David Richmond Report of 1983 found systematic institutional abuse of patients and recommended moving people out of psychiatric wards to be cared for in the community, 'deinstitutionalisation', has simply replaced abuse with abandonment and land-speculation with ideology.

Willsmere Hospital, along with many instititions for the mentally ill, was has been progressively reduced in size, and their services provided by general hospitals, supported accommodation, hostels and even gaols. Again, our most vulnerable put in government's too hard basket. Instead of providing acute care, governments have focused on cost cutting and land sales, like Kew Cottages.

The problem is not confined to Victoria. In NSW hospitals, 60 per cent of doctors said they felt pressured to prematurely discharge those with a mental illness because of bed shortages, and almost 70 per cent had been unable to get a bed for a patient with a mental illness in the previous three months.

"The sheer volume is extraordinary ... We paid the price some time ago for this change in direction of taking care outside of institutions and into the community," says Paul Preisz, a senior staff specialist in the St Vincent's emergency department.

"We don't have anywhere to send the patients."

"From the past year alone I can relate stories of people with mental illness sleeping on the floors of our hospitals or being locked in small seclusion rooms, in worse conditions than a jail cell, for days at a time," says psychiatric nurse Toby Raeburn.

NSW prisons are now de facto psychiatric institutions. Government figures indicate that 78 per cent of male prisoners and 90 per cent of female prisoners experienced a psychiatric disorder in the year before they went into jail. ['Out of Mind', SMH, 12 Feb 2005].

While the Victorian Government may have ripped down the long high brick wall around Kew Cottages to open it up to the community for housing, it has retained a shroud of avoidance around the mental health problem in our society.

The Victorian Government has illegitimately profited from its decades of neglect of mental health responsibilities and then has profited from selling public land set aside for mental health care. It has immorally encouraged new investors in Kew Cottages to effectively displace our mentally ill, many of whom now have nowhere to go.

Rod Quantock is currently appearing in First Man Standing at Trades Hall in Carlton, 03 9659 5699, but here he is in a stand up role for democracy (which does seem very funny in Victoria) at the Mary Drost-led rally in July.

This film was made on the occasion of the Planning Backlash rally against the horrific, undemocratic changes being forced on Victoria's population, more about which you may read and view by going to the Marvellous Melbourne website at www.marvellousmelbourne.org, where you will find an example worth following of how to organise a rally and motivate people to confront government and undesirable policies.

How could a comedien not get involved in Victorian politics? Or Brisbane ones? Or West Oz ones or ...
Anyway...

You can see Rod live in his new show called, First Man Standing!

'First Man Standing'
Now Playing:
Wed to Sat, 6 Aug to 6 Sept, 8:00pm
Trades Hall, Carlton
Tickets: $20 - $35
Bookings: comedyattrades.com.au or 03 9659 5699 or at the door. (Rod recommends 'at the door')