Australia's growth lobby problem

In a piece in The Australian[1] Dec 24, 2015, entitled "Honey, we shrank the backyard," population growth promoter for the property investment sector, Bernard Salt, observes that the block size of ordinary Australian houses has shrunk due to lifestyle changes such as after school organised sport and other after school activities and women working. The backyard, Salt acknowledges, was a “wondrous place” where children used to play in a relatively unstructured space, unobserved by parents, during an unsophisticated era devoid of today's patios and outdoor eating. The conclusion is that, after all, shrinking backyards come with bigger cities, and and a “leaner, cleaner more efficient way of living”.

Why has Bernard Salt written this article?

One must bear in mind that it is the 1950s brick veneer villa that Bernard Salt targets. It appears to be his job to do this and to "evict" the ordinary Australians who live in these houses. He does not target houses such as the luxurious older style mansion where he lives in the comfortable suburb of Camberwell.

I heard him in person, as an invited speaker at a public meeting in Hawthorn about 4 years ago, derisively referring to widows in these houses "rattling around" and that they should move out, or words to this effect. This latest piece specifically refers to the back yards of brick veneer houses.

A.V. Jennings brick veneers with backyards

Many of the Post WW2 brick veneer houses in Melbourne were built by A.V.Jennings when there was an acute housing shortage. According to Jennings, one of the key design features of them was that children could be observed through the kitchen window playing in the backyard. I know this because a friend of mine was related to Jennings by marriage and she reports this is what he used to say about his creations. (This contrasts with Salt's memory or description of children being unobserved.)

The apparent purpose of the middle paragraphs of Salt's article are to paint an unattractive, unsophisticated rather bogan picture of what is being snatched from us, so that we won't want to try to hang on or to grieve too much. In this, Salt appears to draw heavily on Barry Humphries' work so - easy money for him.

Why do families now need two incomes and still can't afford housing?

Regarding Salt's pronouncement that "Mum's at work" and kids are in after-school activities, I would have thought the first would be the cause of the second. They are not independent of each other. Why is Mum at work? Or should I ask, "Why are both parents working and paying others to look after their children after school?" (After school care is not a free service.) Did people suddenly realise what great fun it was to be at work, so much fun that they would deny themselves the ONLY, chance that they would ever get in their lives to spend time with their offspring in the brief period called childhood? I somehow doubt it.

I would suggest that the design of low maintenance outdoor living areas probably reflects time poverty in households where both parents go to work. The trend to smaller blocks for people raising children is not a reflection of lifestyle choice but of economic imperative as housing prices and rents have risen. Both parents working instead of one amounts to a loss to the home of about 10 hours per day, 5 days per week. That is time lost to such activities as maintaining a garden.

Faux evolutionary approach to normalising land confiscation

Salt makes the loss of the backyard sound like an evolutionary process as we find more enticing pursuits outside the home but he doesn't say what those pursuits are. In rubbishing the old back yard, he singles out the incinerator. The incinerator has recently acquired very unattractive connotations both aesthetically and in terms of air pollution and carbon emissions. People are now very sensitive to these issues and Salt's reference to incinerators provides a great example of a way to turn everyone off the notion of ordinary Australians having a bit of land for themselves. I don't think incinerators then were universal, anyway and now we have paper and cardboard recycling. But is this a fair exchange for losing "the back yard" ? Should we be thus punished for past incinerator follies?

Society's gain is expressed as a "leaner, cleaner more efficient way of living." This is, however, unconvincing, as there is nothing in this description that alludes to quality of life or to any actual purpose for our lives, apart from "work".

Who might this article convince? People who have very limited time for reading, the actual victims who are fast losing space and amenity as the population soars and for whom a no regrets article like this might be somewhat comforting.

NOTES

[1] Note that Murdoch's Australian is one face of Murdoch's property dot com, www.realestate.com.au, so it is not surprising that Mr Salt writes for the Australian and for the Herald Sun.

APop or The Australian Population Institute http://www.apop.com.au/, is an organisation put together by developers and other members of the growth lobby to promote a 'big Australia' - that is, a huge population in Australia. APop campaigns for higher and higher immigration and also for policies for bigger families. Although almost entirely officiated by members from industries driving the growth lobby, the organisation has hosted talks by high profile and credible-sounding people, like university lecturers or authors, which added cachet to their big Australia agenda. The ABC used to quote them a lot as though they were a disinterested demographic organisation, but seems to have stopped doing this in past few years, perhaps due to complaints about APop's growth agenda affecting its objectivity, but perhaps more likely due to a decline in APop activities.

See http://www.apop.com.au/news.html At first APop seemed to be the peak growth lobby developer body, with branches in all or most states, but the Property Council of Australia appears to have taken over the baton as the ultra peak body. However, APop is still in there with a fascinating cast of growth lobby stars with fingers in property development pies at all levels. I have attached a picture of the current APop front page, followed by some information about the industry backgrounds of Committee members. Note that there are quite strong links with the Scanlon Foundation which itself has strong links to ATSE and to the Multicultural Foundation of Australia and thence to most recent prime ministers and opposition leaders. APop in 2009 hosted Professor Andrew Markus, who "presented "Mapping Social Cohesion 2009: The Scanlon Foundation surveys". The presentation provided an overview of the Scanlon Foundation survey findings, with particular attention to change over the last two years and to the challenges facing maintenance of a large immigration program. "

Backgrounds of Current Executive and Committee members Victoria and South Australia :

Jane Nathan (President) - author of many pro growth articles
Michael Hickin botham, Vice President, Hickinbotham Group - South Australia's (SA), describes itself as "the largest and longest established building group in South Australia."
Albert Dennis, (Past President) Dennis Family Corporation - major developers, builds suburbs
Greg Crafter, Johnston Withers Solicitors
Victorian Committee:
Douglas Coomes - Spiire Australia Pty Ltd, Land Development consultants
Chris McNeil, Economist and former Policy Director with Urban Development Institute of Australia, UDIA (Victoria)
Frank Bosco, Director Bosco Jonson, town planners
Tony Fry, Scanlon Foundation see: http://candobetter.net/taxonomy/term/1179
Brenton Gardner, Housing Industry Australia
Jim Curnow, Alexander & Symonds, Surveyors
Tim Jackson, Chief Executive Officer, City of Playford, South Australia

Origins of APop

"The Committee for Economic Development of AustraliaCEDA Conference, November 1999, inaugurated the Australian Population Institute (APop), a group with the sole purpose of promoting a big Australian population. Apop seems to be mainly composed of business people involved in the property development industries.[1] Altogether nine papers were delivered in favour of, or neutral about, population increase, including that of the key speaker, Professor Withers.[2] Without in any way impugning the sincerity and disinterest of the academics involved, Tom Morrow points out in Growing for Broke, that Apop - composed of businessmen with a vested interest in maintaining high population growth - thus benefited from the cachet of academic disinterest, whilst only airing one point of view.[3] Morrow also criticises the lack of an ecological perspective." (Source: Sheila Newman, The Growth Lobby in Australia and its Absence in France

NOTES

[1] This information was yielded by investigating the business associations of the officials of Apop as listed on the Apop website and downloaded on 20/7/2001 from http://www.apop.com.au/people.htm. Additional information about business interests was obtained from the Business Who's Who of Australia, Dun and Bradstreet Marketing P/L, 35th Edition, 2001.
[2] Tom Morrow, Going for Broke, Tomorrow Press, 2001, p.109
[3] Ibid.,"Five of the papers were delivered by university professors, two by PhDs, one by a Federal Cabinet Minister and one by a Shadow Cabinet Minister: impeccably qualified commentators, all - and none of them directly from the corporate sector that was hosting the event."

ACOSS has come to the amazing and unprecedented conclusion that for "an increasing number of Australians, housing affordability is a serious problem that affects their ability to work". A quarter of people battling with housing stress regularly skip meals in order to pay their rent.

"There's a lot of overcrowding, people are bunking up, living in inappropriate forms of housing which are not good for anybody," chief executive of the Australian Council of Social Service Dr Goldie said. (Article republished from comment to front page article.)

Surely this explosion of logic, the profound cognitive process that drew to this conclusion is well overdue? The conclusion is surely obvious, that homelessness is more than a product of "domestic violence" as it's usually portrayed.

Our cities are becoming hostile to our living standards, and the vulnerable are the first to fall between the cracks.

Our real estate and housing-construction based economy means more congestion, and negative social impacts. On any given night, more than 7000 people sleep in crisis accommodation, while more than 105,000 identify as homeless. This is in a country that touts our living standards and wealth all over the world, to lure more people to migrate here!

Dr Goldie, instead of addressing the major cause of poverty, unemployment and unaffordable housing - population growth - she's endorsing funding for the homeless, and urged a bipartisan commitment to increase housing supply to help vulnerable people afford a place to live. To "increase housing supply", or putting more heat on the housing market frenzy, won't produce "affordable housing". With budget constraints, and heavy cut-backs to public services, there's nothing set aside for more social housing either.

ACOSS have no population policy, but their methods are more funding, more more more - of fixing symptoms and not addressing the cause - greed and growth!

Housing affordability driving homelessness SMH