“City to top 7m people”, The Age, 23/10. More grim predictions of Australia’s population growth, with Melbourne reaching the nightmarish status of a megacity, and Australia climbing to 35 million. One politician expresses concern as to how the environment will cope with this (it is devastated already), but Prime Minister Kevin Rudd remains oblivious to such concerns.
Last night Prime Minister Kevin Rudd strongly disagreed with his Treasury chief on the merits of population growth, telling the 7.30 Report: “I actually believe in a big Australia. I make no apology for that.
“I actually think it’s good news that our population is growing,” Mr. Rudd said. “I think it is good for us, it’s good for our national security long term, it’s good in terms of what we can sustain as a nation.”
Words fail me.
“How many is too many?”, Herald-Sun, 30/9. Opinion piece by radio broadcaster Neil Mitchell, focusing on the taboo subject of restricting immigration.
It’s time to grow up. It’s time Australians were trusted to seriously debate what type of country they want and how many people they want in it.
It’s time to drop the political correctness that for years has meant anybody who questioned immigration levels was labelled racist, or a half-witted supporter of Pauline Hanson.
This is not about race. Australia does and should welcome people from anywhere provided they can add something to this one. This is about numbers, and the future.
[…]
It is predicted the population will be 35 million by 2050. Is that sensible? Will it be sustainable? Will an arid, underdeveloped country be able to cope? Or will it destroy living standards and create environmental disaster?
All this must be tackled. Long before climate change was a theory, let alone a political force, Australia was short of water. Where do find enough for 35 million people?
Roads are clogged, cities are sprawling and governments are struggling to keep up with the medical needs of the ageing population.
“House prices to rocket by 20pc, forecast leading experts”, Herald-Sun, 14/10. The media always portrays such rises in a positive tone, but this means that people who simply want a home to live in (not an investment) will find this task even harder. The property market in Australia is out of control, and it is time to stop favoring investors (and, of course, restricting population growth would also help remedy the situation). Not helping matters is that the Federal Government recently removed restrictions on overseas non-residents buying residential property here. A relevant letter, 22/10:
Negative gearing heats up market
Increasing interest rates to curb the housing market is akin to using Roundup to kill the crop and the weeds. Although rates have been at 40-year lows not all segments of the community have benefited. Many credit card holders are paying about 20 per cent interest despite official rates being less than 4 per cent, while overdraft and business loan rates remain high.
The market is overheated for three reasons: generous negative-gearing laws, across-the-board first home grants and the opening-up of residential property to overseas investors.
The solutions are to restrict negative gearing so investors only enjoy tax advantages if they build low-cost housing; closing the residential market to overseas investors; and only providing first home grants for that section of the community that earns a combined weekly income of less than $1500.
Such measures would prick the housing bubble without putting in jeopardy what is at best a paper recovery.
– Joseph Toscano, Fitzroy
The Age letters roundup.
Exasperated with the increasingly autocratic Labor Government, 6/10:
An amendment too far
The Brumby Government has finally become more arrogant than the Kennett government in its treatment of the Victorian people.
The Planning Minister has gone too far in his handling of changes in the positioning of the new ring road to appease his developer mates. The lack of open government is appalling, along with the lack of consultation with the people adversely affected by their decisions.
Living in an urban growth area, I have experienced first-hand the lack of consultation and misinformation from this Government. It took a long time before Justin Madden was prepared to meet members of Taxed Out, the lobby group opposed to the Growth Areas Infrastructure Contribution (tax). I don’t think he had realised just how organised we are.
There needs to be an independent inquiry into the powers wielded by this Government. It is a law unto itself and does all it can to help big business, at the peril of anyone who gets in its way. The Brumby Government is more Liberal than Labor; it is completely out of touch with its grassroots members. John Brumby may well go down in history as the best Liberal premier that Labor ever had. Hopefully, also, the Premier who never got elected.
– Heather Holtham, Officer
Get off the grass
Only part of the land featuring in Evolve Development’s proposed precinct plan was included in a desktop flora study done by the Government’s consultant as it was not intended to be included in the new urban growth boundary. This area contained many precious grassland remnants before the recent clearings.
There are grassland reserves that are to be used as offsets for grasslands lost. Unfortunately these reserves will be set up after clearing is done, so there is no guarantee that they will work. By then the higher quality sites will have been cleared.
These grasslands support species that are critically endangered. These animals are suffering the same fate as orang-utans and pandas. However, it is happening on Melbourne’s doorstep and nobody seems to care.
– Giorgio De Nola, Caroline Springs
Population growth, 8/10 (the “elephant in the room” metaphor is increasingly overused, though):
Courage from Kelvin
To hear an MP bravely pointing out the elephant in the room is refreshing. I refer to MP Kelvin Thomson (“MP blasts planning ‘failure’ ”, The Age, 7/10) calling for a halt to the state’s population growth, as it underlies the pressures to expand Melbourne.
Debate about Melbourne’s future focuses on how to accommodate its projected population growth, by increasing housing density and/or building more suburbs. Both approaches degrade our quality of life.
Furthermore, these approaches are only temporary measures: they buy time until the new homes, roads, and other infrastructure are filled. They kept steering us away from the goal of a sustainable city. Thank goodness one MP has the courage to point this out.
A growing population is simply and clearly unsustainable. By ignoring this, this State Government is grossly negligent. Its policies of accommodating (even encouraging) population growth are akin to a doctor advising his patient, concerned that he is gaining weight, to buy larger clothes.
– Ian Penrose, North Warrandyte
9/10:
We’re all lemmings
Peter Garrett is considering the Queensland Government’s Traveston Crossing Dam proposal. Like the majority of our parliamentarians, he is a lawyer. We can only hope that, unlike most, he will listen to the scientists. The proposal, to drown thousands of hectares of our best agricultural land, is Queensland’s response to unabated urban sprawl.
NSW has become a governmental basket case; Victoria’s population growth has sprawled Melbourne over its most fertile land. Supplying water to these burgeoning populations is their governments’ worst nightmare. Queensland is following the lemmings over the cliff.
Why are we burying our best land under houses? Because no government, state or federal, has heeded the warnings of the CSIRO in its 2003 Population and Sustainability report. Instead, the lawyers who govern us are heeding the siren song of the economists who are luring the ship of state on to the rocks.
The proposed dam is symptomatic of the fact that we have reached the tipping point in population growth.
– Joy Ringrose, Castaways Beach, Qld
Holding, we’ll cut back when you do
A study has revealed that an extra million people living in Melbourne will “end in chaos” (The Age, 10/10). It appears that Melbourne’s roads will not cope with the increase in population.
Then there was the article about water needs (“Spring rain a fillip for dam levels”) and Tim Holding’s intention to extract 10 billion litres from the Thomson River. He went on to implore that households cut back on water consumption.
I find this rather disingenuous, given that Mr Holding is a member of John Brumby’s pro-population growth Government. Water savings by Melburnians are being squandered by the State Government’s profligate approach to population growth. Any surplus saved water should be used to conserve Melbourne’s parks and gardens.
Instead, the amenity of our urban and suburban environment is diminished by the growth-at-any-cost attitude of the Brumby and Rudd governments.
Victorians do their best by saving water, reducing carbon dioxide emissions and recycling. These efforts will prove futile when measured against an increased total use of resources due to population increase.
Tim Holding’s exhortation that households cut back should be matched with an appropriate policy on population.
– Nicholas Howe, Malvern
Only one Earth
Well, James Jenkins (Letters, 16/10), those 14 out of 25 people who wrote letters to the editor about the environment understand something you do not. Without a healthy environment, nothing else matters. If we are unable to live in an environmentally, economically and socially responsible manner, then human beings are heading for extinction.
Yes, perhaps poverty and torture are important, but worrying about them is useless if we don’t have clean water, breathable air or food. We only have one Earth – so our greatest concern should be looking after it.
– Sandra Weller, Ballarat
