Earnest Healey

‘Stop the Drop’: Ban Aerial Baiting with 1080 Poison, Treasury Gardens Melbourne (Lawn 4), November 24, 5 -8 pm. Since 2014, Victorian governments have been routinely dropping tonnes of cruel 1080 poison over vast areas of the Victorian natural environment from helicopters. Supposedly to protect farm stock from ‘wild dogs’, it is of virtually no benefit to farmers and nothing to do with ‘wild dogs’. The ‘wild dogs’ being killed are really Dingoes, the native Australian apex predator, a threatened species in Victoria and essential to the stability and health of Victorian ecosystems.

In October 2019, 26 prominent scientists, including some of the most respected, senior environmental scientists in Australia, wrote a joint, open letter to the Victorian Minister for the Environment, calling for the discontinuation of aerial baiting with 1080 poison.

Aerial baiting up for renewal - now is the time to step in to stop it

In December 2019 the Victorian government’s permission from the federal government to aerial bait with 1080 poison will expire. The Andrews Labor government must not seek renewed federal permission to continue this cruel and unnecessary assault upon Dingoes and Victorian ecosystems. This persecution has involved the deliberate mis-characterisation of Dingoes as ‘wild dogs’ by government bureaucrats, farm lobby extremists and the poison industry, thereby avoiding public scrutiny and potentially misleading government ministers.

SPEAKERS: Evan Quartermain Humane Society International, John Marsh Potoroo Palace New South Wales, Rohana Hayes Wolves Theatre
MUSICIANS: The Wild Orchids Chris Scheri Flautist and Robyn Youlten Guitarist
ART FOR EARTH: Candle Art installation by JORGE PUJOL “SAVE OUR DINGOES”
Sponsors: Bushland Dingo Haven Inc., Ron Holden; Anonymous; Jihrrahlinga Conservation Centre; Sime Validzic; Ernest & Robyn Healy, Marilyn Nuske

Contacts for this Event :Dr Ernest Healey [email protected]
Lawyer Marilyn Nuske - [email protected]

House prices are higher in Sydney and Melbourne than in almost all other developed-nation cities with the result that most young households cannot afford to buy a detached house. Why? Part of the explanation is a combination of generous tax benefits to investors and upgrading home owners. This has prompted massive investment in dwellings, but mostly in established detached housing. This investment drives up prices without adding to supply. New research report, 3 July 2018Bob Birrell and Ernest Healy, Immigration and the Housing Affordability Crisis in Sydney and Melbourne

However these investors and upgrading home owners are competing for detached housing with large numbers of young resident and migrant households. Tax advantages together with high levels of immigration-fuelled population growth have meant that there has been only one way prices could go; that is up.

The Greater Sydney Commission along with the Grattan Institute and the Reserve Bank (as well as most planners and commentators) assert that the solution to the affordability crisis is to abolish zoning constraints on medium-density housing in existing suburban areas.

They all ignore the migration factor. Yet net overseas migration (NOM) is responsible for about 64 per cent of Sydney’s household growth, and thus 64 per cent of Sydney’s growth in demand for dwellings, and 54 per cent of Melbourne’s.

This study indicates that the abolition of zoning constraints will not solve the affordability problem. This is because the price escalation Allfor detached houses has simultaneously pushed up the site costs for potential new medium-density housing. The result is that developers cannot produce affordable family-friendly units or town houses on these sites.

In the recent past, in both Sydney and Melbourne, zoning constraints in established suburbia have been relaxed. However, the study shows that this has not led to significant increases in medium-density housing, for precisely this reason. We argue that a further relaxation of zoning rules will not work in the future.

The encouragement given by both the NSW and Victorian state governments to the construction of high-rise apartments has also not worked to solve the affordability crisis. This is despite the jump in the number of such apartments in both cities over the past few years. This supply has not solved the problem because apartments do not meet the needs of most new resident and migrant households, needs which are primarily for family friendly housing.

A cut back in migration has to be part of the solution to Sydney and Melbourne’s housing affordability crisis.