Australia’s population officially reached 23 million on 23 April; a milestone that was generally reported positively. The population is small compared to many other countries (as is pointed out with tedious regularity), but Australia does not have a great amount of habitable land, so most of the population tends to live along the coastline, and much of that is clumped into the major cities.
Melbourne is, unfortunately, leading the nation’s population growth, and the negative effects of this are ever increasing: chronic traffic congestion (is it a coincidence that road rage is on the increase?), increased housing prices, inappropriate high-density developments in suburbs, pressure on health care, public transport and other services … the list goes on. Little if anything about this manic growth is for the better. From my perspective – I live in a suburb of Melbourne – quality of life is definitely deteriorating and the stress from this is continual. The State Government makes nebulous promises about improving infrastructure, but at the same time they cut funding.
Much of that infrastructure seems to only involve building more environmentally-destructive roads – an example being this brief report from my local newspaper (also online):
Plants face chop
ENDANGERED vegetation will be removed to make way for the new Dingley bypass, despite objections from green groups.
Greater Dandenong Council has given VicRoads the go-ahead to rip out a large old tree and vegetation, classified as “of very high conservation significance”, from the 0.19ha swampy woodland in the Westall Rd reserve.
Four environmental groups have slammed the unadvertised proposal. They say an overpass should be built to protect them.
Engineering services director Bruce Rendall said the proposal was not advertised because no third party would suffer.
It is similar to the Westerfield heritage woodlands being bulldozed through in 2010 (see 10/7/2010, 24/10/2010 entries) for the Frankston bypass. Native bushland continues to be razed for so-called “progress” and one feels so powerless and frustrated that it can’t be stopped. The Australian Aborigines lived here for 40,000 years or more, but in all that vast span of time they never did as much damage as did the arrival of European settlers in the last 200 years. The estimated population of Aborigines before settlement/invasion was around a million or so – something the fragile landscape here could cope with.
Some recent letters:
Herald-Sun, 23/3:
Population a threat
A FAST-growing population is nothing to smile about.
We live in one of the most arid countries in the world, with limited areas of good soil suited to agriculture.
We are in the process of impoverishing our own and future generations by building on and degrading the high-quality land we have left, as well as degrading and destroying our other natural resources such as waterways and forests. Many other species who share this country with us have little hope of surviving a human population explosion and climate change. Our numbers are our biggest threat to their future — and ours.
– Jennie Epstein, Little River
1/4:
People overload
AS the big Australia juggernaut rolls past 23 million people and currently continues unabated towards 39 million people by 2050, one must seriously question the unsustainable 1.6 per cent population growth over the past 20 years — and well into the future.
The impact in our major capital cities has resulted in cash-strapped state governments and councils scrambling to try to provide the required services or new infrastructure necessary to support the massively increased population.
No parliamentary party has a mandate for a ‘‘Big Australia’’.
With a federal election this year, surely it is high time there was a referendum on the subject so that at least all voting Australians own the preferred outcome.
Considering the implication of such decisions impacts the very essentials of life — food, housing, energy costs, congestion, environmental impact and degradation, and overall standard of living — it is simply unacceptable for property developers and the big end of town to be unilaterally driving the outcome via parliamentary puppets as is currently the case. We all deserve our say on such a vitally important issue.
– Tony Smith, Burwood
29/4:
Get population priorities right
HAVE the people of Melbourne ever really cared that the population of their city was smaller than that of Sydney? (‘‘Growing pains us,’’ HS, Apr 25).
When population growth was lower and the pressures on schools, transport, hospitals, ambulance services, water and open space were not as great as they are now, most people’s priorities were no doubt their own private lives, rather than comparing the size of their city with one in another state.
The energies of Victoria’s leaders now seem to be largely taken up in dealing with population growth.
If the state’s population stabilised over the next few decades, the State Government could concentrate on providing adequate services and amenity to all, as well as having a reasonable chance of preserving what is left of our natural environment.
– Jill Quirk, president, Sustainable Population Australia, Vic/Tas
Old growth thinking
THE concept of perpetual growth — economic and demographic — is outmoded. We have access to limited resources in Australia, like it or not, and as they become scarcer, a small percentage of our population will undoubtedly benefit from the profits as the rest of us pay the price of higher costs for water and other essential services, poorer health services, congestion and loss of open space.
Other species that share our land are losing their habitat altogether. Moving our population growth to regional areas will not solve anything.
– Jennie Epstein, Little River
From The Age, 24/4:
When is there enough?
Since I was born in the 1960s the population of Australia has doubled. With a developing-world growth rate of 1.7 per cent, it will double again in another 40 years or so. Do we have a standard of living twice as good as in the 1960s? An economist, just looking at income and the gadgets we can buy, would say “of course”. But ask someone who has to spend more than two hours a day in choking traffic and who is made to feel guilty for watering their tiny garden on the edge of suburbia and you might get a different answer.
What the proponents of ongoing growth will never tell us is when there will be enough people in this country. When we’ve reached United States proportions of 300 million plus?
– Ralph Judd, Blackburn North
26/4:
A once strident catchcry from the 20th century, “populate or perish” would be better reworded for the 21st century as “populate and perish”.
– Reg Puddephatt, Warranwood
