24-june-2019

This is an incredibly good interview. If only the ABC had interviewers of this public interest standard. McLaren and Thomson seem to touch on almost everything in about 20 minutes, with appropriate emotion. We have so many problems caused by massive population growth.

Michael McLaren introduces the interview: "What are some of the really big issues that people around the country and around our cites are talking about? Water shortages particularly in the cities. Dam levels are heading down to 50% and falling Many are talking about record multi-billion dollar infrastructure spends, particularly by state governments that are increasingly heading towards debt; Certainly, in Sydney, many people are talking about shoddy, rapidly builtcrumbling, high-rise apartment towers, and more broadly, [...] the green elements of our society people are talking about increasing biodiversity loss. These diverse topics have in common unsustainable rapid population growth. These are all symptoms of that root cause, and yet, the latest figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics show that Australia's population growth is speeding up! In other words, all of those issues and more are only going to get worse." (Michael McLaren of Wake Up Australia 2GB radio) Michael McLaren is joined by Kelvin Thomson, former Federal Member for Wills now advisor for Sustainable Australia Party’s Clifford Hayes to discuss the latest figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics show that Australia’s population growth treadmill is speeding up. Figures released Friday for the end of December 2018 show that in 2018 Australia’s population increased by over 400,000 to pass 25 million. Net migration contributed around 250,000 of this increase while natural increase (births minus deaths) contributed around 150,000 of this figure.