Melbourne on the path to ruin

Haven’t written for a while, though there have been quite a few articles on population issues; I feel disheartened that nothing ever seems to change regarding the problems faced, and that governments and business remain in denial of overpopulation’s negative effects.

“Fast-growing Melbourne heading towards becoming Australia’s largest city”, H-S, 3/4. Dismaying news for my home city, and this will completely destroy its livability, despite the positive statement of the apparently-delusional Premier. At 4.35 million now, traffic on the roads virtually grinds to a halt at times every day, and public transport is beyond capacity. Victoria’s population has also been growing rapidly as a whole (from overseas and interstate), currently at 5,768,000, most of whom head to Melbourne. It has become too popular and this is ruining it. But all Premier Denis Napthine does is “welcome” the strong growth.

“Mumbai: Bright lights, tight city”, The Age, 21/2: article from February on the extreme overcrowding in an Indian city. The situation is quite horrifying, and the people questioned are obviously unhappy about their situation – “We have already reached saturation point. We’ve got skin-to-skin contact on the trains. How much closer together can we live without going mad? There is nowhere to walk, nowhere to throw a ball or have a picnic”. It is obviously extremely unhealthy both mentally and physically. The proponents of high-density living in other countries (including those in Australia) should read this as a cautionary tale: an ultimate outcome of uncontrolled population growth and urbanization.

There has been a lot of recent attention on foreign buyers purchasing residential property in Australia – estimated at one-fifth of all buyers – particularly those from China. Our lax laws encourage this, and it is a major factor in driving up property prices to ridiculous levels, along with strong population growth. Canada recently (and sensibly) cancelled its own 28-year-old visa scheme designed to attract wealthy foreigners to the country, so Australia is now the next easy target for buyers. Of course such attention inevitably attracts criticism that such concern is “racist”, but a government’s priority should be toward its own citizens in providing essential services – shelter is a basic human right – and in this it is failing. The trend is also fuelling unwanted demolitions and inappropriate developments in once-pleasant suburbs, as a columnist laments.

Some collected letters:

Collected letters

Some recent letters concerning population growth projections in Australia (see my previous entry):

Growing out of control

Australia’s rapid population growth has had some media attention again in the last couple of months. As reported in the Herald-Sun, 25/9, Melbourne is the fastest-growing capital city and the downside of this is all too apparent:

A boom town

MELBOURNE’S population is booming, with 1350 people moving in each week, a government report says.

Victoria is expected to boast 5.41 million people by 2031.

Migration is the main factor behind the increase, according to the Growth Areas Authority 2012-13 annual report, released this month.

The growth is higher than any other capital city.

Melbourne has had the highest growth rate for the past 11 years, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

In 2011-12, after deaths and people leaving the state were accounted for, Melbourne’s population grew by 77,242.

Melbourne MP Kelvin Thomson is practically the only politician who is outspoken about population growth, and was reported to be launching an NGO concerned with the issue. He was also profiled in an The Age article. Comments from other politicians there, though, show how locked into the growth-is-good ideology they are.

As reported in The Age, a report released by the Productivity Commission last week projected Australia’s population to reach 42 million by 2060, with Melbourne and Sydney housing 7 million each. While modest by many countries’ standards, it is a lot for a relatively infertile and dry continent with a fragile environment that is still being degraded and damaged by human activity.

Another report for Victoria said that the state’s population is growing by 100,000 a year – most of whom end up in Melbourne, to its increasing detriment.

Unbelievably, the Working holiday visa scheme in Australia is to be expanded, despite there being a growing unemployment issue here. Many are from countries with high unemployment and are financially struggling. Australia is essentially being treated as a relief or escape valve for other countries’ problems – but it should not be our role to serve as this. It is another betrayal of citizens by the government here.

Melbourne most livable (again)

Melbourne was voted most livable for this year again for health care, education and infrastructure. Which bemused many, including me, as there is much to be improved in all these areas. It is certainly a better place to live than many other cities, but far from perfect.

I dislike this sort of publicity as this makes people more inclined to want to move here when the city and suburbs are already bursting at the seams and struggling to cope. Another article came out this week saying Melbourne was undergoing rapid population growth, which is dismayingly obvious to anyone who has lived here for a while – infrastructure is not coping with the influx.

Melbourne’s population is swelling by 2 per cent a year, adding more than 900,000 people since this century began – and putting it on track to be a city of 8 million people by 2050.

The Bureau of Statistics estimates that in mid-2012, the city’s population was about to hit 4.25 million, after six boom years in which it grew by almost half a million.

Recent bureau figures imply that Melbourne today is home to 4.35 million people – and 27 per cent bigger than the city it was at the start of 2000.

With a rapidly growing population squeezing into road and rail systems that are barely growing at all, this would intensify the strain on the city’s infrastructure, leading to increased congestion on the roads and overcrowding on trains.

The figures will probably seem miniscule compared with many major cities – Wikipedia has a list of these, where population for the highest is into the tens of millions. High density living is promoted as desirable because amenities are close together, but there is a tradeoff in loss of open space, stress from overcrowding, noise and other pollution, and limited access to nature. A properly-planned city might alleviate some of these negative factors, but few if any urban centers are; they tend to grow haphazardly over decades as more people are crammed in.

Embrace growth? No thanks!

“State government minister says Victoria should embrace growth”, Herald-Sun, 2/8. I read the statements by a Victorian State Government minister in this article with stunned disbelief. Despite all the problems population growth is causing Melbourne – which are acknowledged in the article – we should “welcome” it because it is supposedly economically and socially beneficial. Probably the only people benefiting from growth are parasitical property developers, as is mentioned near the end, as it means more homes being built (never mind the environmental damage from more land being built over). This is a prime example of a self-perpetuating problem: continually encouraging growth means that infrastructure and services are forever struggling to keep up, and never quite manage to. People are increasingly stressed from competing for dwindling resources, living space and jobs, which does nothing for the supposed “diversity” championed in the article – it’s more likely to lead to social disintegration.

23 million and counting

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:

Developers’ paradise

If there is one thing I dislike about the subreddit r/Australia (and perhaps Reddit in general!) it is that it seems to be dominated by patronizingly smug young urban males. The main topic that incites this irritation is anything to do with urban planning . The prevailing opinion there is – to use one direct quote – “Taller buildings means higher density, less sprawl, less traffic, more efficient, better for environment.” Anyone who contradicts this view – such as suggesting that population growth should be restricted so that high density is not so necessary – is regarded with contempt (“NIMBYs!”) and downvoted.

This was in a thread about the latest ugly monstrosity for Melbourne predictably approved by Planning Minister Matthew Guy. Such extravagences are merely profit-making exercises for developers and mostly overseas investors, and do nothing to alleviate the housing crisis here or help the environment (as one commenter points out in the article comments: “Heating and cooling of common areas 24/7, running elevators 24/7. No access to air clothes drying – every apartment will be running a dryer. The energy consumption of apartments is higher than homes add to that they can not use green energy like solar, water catchment etc.”). I sincerely hope that the property market will collapse catastrophically, and an airplane fly into the building.

A Danish urban designer called Jan Gehl visited Melbourne last week and was critical of Docklands, and high-rise in general:

Professor Gehl is critical of high-rise towers as a planning solution. “The residential tower is the lazy architect’s answer to density,” he said. “My interest is ‘cities for people’ not ‘cities for developers’ and not ‘cities that make traffic happy’.”

Cities packed with tall glass-and-concrete towers are dreary, ugly and dehumanizing; the buildings are harsh and cold in aspect. Many of the ancient cities in Europe are pleasing to look at as their older apartment buildings are generally low-rise and made of stone, which gives them a warmer organic feel.

A recent article at io9 showed some designs of futuristic cities with a more organic look rather than the sterile glass-and-concrete metropolises usually favored by architects.

Some letters criticizing the development (and planning generally):

Freeway mania

The Peninsula Link is soon to open. This is the freeway
opposed by environment groups as it cut through several reserves, including the Pines Flora and Fauna Reserve, heritage original native bushland. The aerial map images below show the extent of the destruction:

2009:

2012:

The remaining creatures living there will be subjected to the noise and pollution from thousands of motor vehicles passing through every day.

Those who participated in this vandalism – construction workers and others – should be thoroughly ashamed. How would they like their houses to be bulldozed while they were living in them? So much of Victoria’s vegetation has been cleared since European settlement and it is still ongoing despite supposedly greater environmental awareness now. The situation is much the same in other states.

Roads are one infrastructure item governments always seem to find funding for – despite making cuts to vital services such as health care – and there are more planned around Melbourne to scar the landscape. Population growth is one driving force (so to speak) behind road construction and there is no sign of either stopping, unfortunately.

A relevant letter from today’s Herald-Sun:

Precious peninsula

THE Government claims the new Peninsula Link freeway will cut the time of traveling between Mt Martha and Carrum Downs by 17 minutes, and save 40 minutes in peak time.

The aim is more than an expensive $759 million effort to reduce driving times for commuters.

The peninsula’s green wedges will be more accessible and be nibbled away for urban sprawl. More land will be opened for housing to soak up our population growth, set at full-throttle speed by government policies.

More of our environmental and social capital will be traded in so developers and investors can profit from Melbourne’s growth.

Housing on the peninsula won’t be affordable, but maximised by good location and the globalisation of the property market.

– Beatrice Ortega, Heidelberg Heights

More angering news is that the Victorian Planning Minister now has new powers to speed major projects. Which means he can override environmental concerns and residents’ protests against inappropriate developments in favor of business and developers. I feel so helpless to oppose these greedy growth-obsessed parasites and politicians, and it is incredibly frustrating to see the continuing destruction of the once-livable city and state I have grown up in.

---

Addendum: A letter, The Age, 29/1:

Destroying nature just to fulfil wants

AS PENINSULA Link opens to huge amounts of traffic and raves about the racing car-perfect surface, we should take a minute to think about what we have lost in order to save some time: hundreds of trees that were homes to wildlife, hundreds of hectares of precious habitat for endangered southern brown bandicoots, and the songs of birds. We’re going to lose more as development speeds up throughout the Mornington Peninsula and, in particular, the Tootgarook Swamp, which stands in the way of the Peninsula Link extension to Rye.

The cost, so often advertised as $756 million, will be more than $2 billion by the time we pay it off over 25 years. As we hear more and more of our human services being cut, education being slashed, and hospital beds being closed, I despair at our selfish desire for comfort over substance; and at our ability to leave a sustainable planet for the future.

– Gillian Collins, Friends of the Pines Flora and Fauna Reserve, Frankston North

News article, 31/1: “Peninsula Link blamed for more animal fatalities on Casey roads”, Cranbourne Leader.

High-density hell

Every time I visit Melbourne CBD (every few months by train) I am reminded why I don’t like cities and certainly wouldn’t want to live there as a resident! It is noisy, stinky and increasingly crowded, not to mention unbearably hot in summer with all the asphalt and concrete smothering the ground, the streets claustrophobically overshadowed by towering buildings. And this is the city again voted world’s most livable! I shudder to think what less-livable cities are like.

A new resident to the CBD made the mistake of complaining about how noisy it was – the main offenders being music venues – and oh was he castigated, both in the article comments and elsewhere (Reddit’s mostly-younger members being a predictable example). Well, seeing as governments are pushing for higher-density cities, this sort of conflict is going to happen a lot, so I don’t know why those castigating him were so offended. Is there any law that says cities have to be noisy, aside from fatuous bullshit about noise contributing to “vibrancy”? A lot of what passes for “music” is just loud noise pollution and the environment is better off without it.

There was a quite vitriolic post on Reddit – Urban Sprawl now biggest impediment to Economy – where those who objected to high density/urban consolidation being touted as the ultimate solution to our woes got downvoted and called NIMBYers (the usual predictably tired insult). They are anti-backyards (a wasteful allotment of space according to their philosophy) and think everyone should live crammed into apartment towers with a park or two providing lonely oases of greenery. I have given up arguing with people of that mindset as they have a quasi-religious conviction that high-density is the only acceptable way to live. Not so – reducing population growth would enable people to live in detached houses with gardens and backyards, and contain urban sprawl – it would also ensure that land is retained for local food production. But this alternative solution is unthinkable to high-density advocates.

I also found disagreeable this later related post, You want housing up, not out? – the HD advocates (I really need a catchy name for them) want to brainwash children into their cult:

My idea is to use an art/design competition to harness the imaginations of older children and effectively use their drawings as covert propaganda for the type of places we want to exist, after steering their little minds towards what we want them to draw. It’ll be asking primary school children to draw how they foresee their dream Australian lifestyle, or dream city in X amount of years. What will streets and cities look like? How will people live?

This Sustainable Living webpage from NSW Save Our Suburbs gives arguments against urban consolidation. (They don’t, however, advocate restricting population growth; rather, they encourage regional decentralization.)

My little utopian vision is of cities being mostly depopulated, and people living in smaller regional towns, each having its own sustainable power and food supplies, and connected by high-speed rail and Internet. A slower, environmentally-friendly and more relaxed society. I would like to see a “small, smart and sustainable” future for Australia; I emphatically reject the “big Australia” and frantic unsustainable push for endless economic growth that currently has us trapped.

Melbourne in 2050: unlivable

“Still liveable?”, The Age, 22/11. This in-depth article looks at the rapid growth of Melbourne – predicted at the current rate to reach 6.4 million in 2050 – and the failure of the State Government to keep up with the infrastructure required to support such numbers. New suburbs are being built on what was once farmland at great distances from the CBD, and the residents there have virtually nothing in the form of access to public transport. The current planning system favors developers at the expense of livability issues, and there is no move to change this. Of course, the basic problem is the relentless population growth the city has been inundated with – and neither State nor Federal Governments appear willing to tackle this issue by reducing the too-high immigration rate, and discouraging the high birth rate – too radical for our growth-based economy to contemplate. One academic quoted in the article does not believe population growth is a problem:

The state government’s 20-minute city proposal is “a complete pipedream”, says Carolyn Whitzman, associate professor in urban planning at Melbourne University. “Whether Melbourne has 4 million or 6 million people, we’re not travelling in a particularly equitable direction,” she says. “I don’t necessarily see population growth as a bad thing, it just has to be managed properly. Currently, we live in a socially divided and environmentally unsustainable city.”

Realistically, population growth is almost never “managed properly” – certainly not by Australian governments – and with most cutting funding such management is even more unlikely.

From a commenter in a related article:

Still more articles agonising about strategies for adapting Melbourne’s moribund infrastructure to cope with future population explosion, all predicated on the unspoken and unchallenged assumption that population growth is inevitable and sacred. None of the learned commentators and politicians dares mention the obvious solution – limiting population growth, which could be done with social pressure on parents to limit family sizes, and governments limiting immigration. Why the collective dread of mentioning this obvious fact?

– boxchester, Melbourne, November 22, 2012, 11:48AM

I feel like starting a Mattew Guy hate page on Facebook or something! The Planning Minister comes across as arrogant and condescending in his statements, such as this opinion piece: “The metropolis our forefathers built will continue to be vibrant and exciting”, H-S, 22/11, a relentlessly optimistic extolling of Melbourne’s continous expansion. (I would like to declare a fatwa on the word vibrant …) He is of the opinion that huge skyscrapers make a city “sophisticated” – “Mr Guy dismissed those who complain about over-development, saying: ‘If Melbourne is too successful, maybe they should move to Adelaide’.” (source) – presumably Adelaide is not yet wrecked as Melbourne? “Taller buildings, he said, were a symbol of a growing nation, a strong economy and can ‘define a city’.” (source) He wrote a rather patronizing opinion piece in today’s Herald-Sun: “The metropolis our forefathers built will continue to be vibrant and exciting” (behind a paywall, reproduced below):

Selling off Melbourne

“Alarm over city bribes offer”, The Age, 21/10 and “The land dragons”. A lot of property in Melbourne and surrounding suburbs is being bought up by overseas investors for development, often without regard for those who live around the usually ugly buildings that are erected. Quite a lot of people seem to regard a city full of skyscrapers as sophisticated and futuristic, and regard those who think otherwise as backwards Luddites. I find such buildings dehumanizing and they are claustrophobic to walk under as they block out the sun and sky. Melbourne was a pleasanter place before skyscrapers were built.

The developments do nothing to alleviate the housing affordability crisis and here as they are marketed towards wealthy buyers and investors (some also from overseas). I feverently hope the property market will catastrophically collapse and all these greedy parasites will lose their money.

Some letters from today’s Age in response:

See you later, Mr Xu

JEFF Xu says developers can go elsewhere – if we don’t adopt an exponential approach to growth (“The land dragons”, The Sunday Age, 21/10). Then, Mr Xu, we’ll be seeing you. Growth is the ponzi scheme of the economy. You make your money, walk away and leave us to pick up the pieces. I would rather you left before you make your money that way.

The current wailing from the under-resourced new housing developments on Melbourne’s agricultural fringe will be a roar within a decade. The centre of town will be a lightless slum, and the Matthew Guys, Ron Walkers and Jeff Xus will be long gone – but not forgotten. It is good that developers who are “taking us to the cleaners” are being named.

– CHRISTOPHER MONIE, Ballarat

Room to block view

AS ASIAN-financed boxes move further skyward, much charm in our city is slowly being diminished. Perhaps it is just as well that our suburban transport system’s use of external advertising, at least partially, obscures our view of the changing landscape.

– PAUL MURCHISON, Kingsbury

Weed out corruption

CITY of Melbourne councillor Ken Ong warns of a “ ‘subculture’ of corruption taking root in Melbourne” (“Alarm over city bribes offer”, The Sunday Age, 21/10). However, the subculture of corruption may have already taken firm root in a range of areas. We have small-scale entrepreneur “Mary” operating her business of ghost-writing assignments, and now large-scale, bribe-offering developer entrepreneurs at the big end of town.

Regardless of how business may be done in other countries, it is vital for the wellbeing of our society that we ensure things are done here with honesty and due process. Vigilant scrutiny and constant weeding out of any corruption before its poisonous roots go too deep is needed. Applause for Councillor Ong for his timely warning.

– DEBORAH MORRISON, Malvern East

Not our backyard

SHANGHAI property developer Jeff Xu says developers “can choose Canada … they can choose Shanghai”. I respectfully recommend choosing Shanghai for fulfilling high-rise fantasies; leave Melbourne alone. Australians like wide-open spaces; they want to see the sky, the ocean, the hills and plains, feel surrounded by nature. They do not want to live in crammed spaces removed from the environment. Melbourne is one of the world’s most liveable places thanks to its parks and gardens, not because of its looming towers in the CBD.

– MARGIT ALM, Eltham

“Chinese parents invest in overseas digs for sons and daughters”, Wentworth Courier, 5/10. This trend also drives up house prices and pushes out local citizens who simply want a place to live. Any hope of the government closing this loophole? Not likely.

Collected letters

Another batch of letters from The Age, in response to the article linked to last entry about Planning Minister Matthew Guy. Most feel the same negativity toward him and the planning system as I do. I did not comment on the planning reforms site as I did not know what to say specifically about the topics – not qualified enough.

Planning for destruction

“The Planning Guy” – profile of Victorian Liberal Government Planning Minister, Matthew Guy. I thought that previous Labor Minister Justin Madden was bad, but this one is far worse. The radical planning changes he is pushing through will give virtual free rein to developers and ruin Melbourne’s established suburbs by continuing overdevelopment and overcrowding, and pave over much of the remaining green spaces. Even Lady April Hamer, the widowed wife of the creator of the Green Wedges areas (ironically from the Liberal party of then), was moved to speak out last month against the changes. There is more commentary on the issue at (We) Can Do Better.

An article from yesterday’s Herald-Sun (not online that I could find) reported that immigration had increased alarmingly:

Big leap in migrant numbers

AN influx of New Zealanders and foreign students has forced the Federal Government to sharply increase its immigration estimates. Net overseas migration has reached about 217,000 people a year — about 25,000 more than was predicted a few months ago. It means the so-called Big Australia target of 36 million by 2050 could be reached much earlier because the estimate is based on average net annual migration of only 184,000.

New Immigration Department data reveals a net influx of 39,000 foreign students for the year to September — more than double the number predicted by the department in a May report.

The net number of New Zealanders arriving has hit 31,300, compared with 17,900 predicted in May. New Zealand and Australian citizens have the unrestricted right to migrate between each other’s borders.

Monash University migration expert Dr Bob Birrell said yesterday the rising number of Kiwi arrivals was a worry in a contracting job market. “It’s unlikely that we need this influx — the sooner we regulate it the better,” Dr Birrell said.

There have been hundreds of job losses from various industries this year in Victoria alone – many from long-established businesses going under – so where are all these newcomers going to find work? It will mean extra competition with those already here. The population growth also increases demand for housing and public services (transport, health), both of which are not keeping pace.

An article from The Age last month, “54,000 refugees, no questions asked”, 22/8, reported that:

AUSTRALIA is facing a flood of economic refugees. But the big numbers aren’t from the north, they are from the across the Tasman where Statistics New Zealand yesterday announced the biggest exodus to Australia on record.

An extraordinary 53,900 New Zealanders moved to Australia in the year to July – around the entire population of New Plymouth, New Zealand’s 11^th biggest city.

[…]

The Closer Economic Relations agreement with New Zealand means Australia is unable to control its trans-Tasman border. It is required to accept as permanent or long-term residents as many of New Zealand’s 4.4 million residents as want to move here. If present trends continue Australia’s annual intake from New Zealand will exceed 100,000 within five years. New Zealand has had no net arrivals over the past year.

It is definitely time to rethink that agreement! The exchange seems to be mostly one-way.

A H-S letter, 4/9:

Jobs going to foreigners

FOREIGN workers on controversial 457 visas have taken 13,680 jobs in Victoria at a time of increasing unemployment, job losses and double-figure youth unemployment in some areas.

Many Victorians are facing tough times.

Why then are jobs going to “temporary” foreign workers?

There’s nothing more permanent than a temporary worker, with many of them ultimately applying for PR and adding to population pressure.

Our Government imagined our economy would surge and grow, even in non-mining states.

This is not happening, and we have more skilled people than jobs and housing.

Employers can simply get the cheaper option of foreign workers instead of investing in, and training, willing Australians needing jobs. It’s a betrayal.

– Vivienne Ortega, Heidelberg Heights

Those who oppose these policies predictably get demonized as xenophobic – this opinion piece in The Australian, “Our future is as Asia’s nation of immigration” espouses the “need” for a big Australia; being a pro-business and pro-growth paper these type of articles are typical.

Gillard is the Adelaide Pom, wanting to freeze-frame the nation. The focus groups tell her to slow population growth, which is code for talking down the immigration intake. She has yet to confront voters with Australia’s need for more people.

[…]

Our future in Asia is as the world’s best immigration nation, that is, as Australians. But we need more, not fewer, Chinese and Indians to want to live across the country to prove it.

So according to that view, Australia should serve as a relief valve for extremely overpopulated countries. We can thus farewell the country’s livability if such growth continues.

Collected letters

Another round-up:

31/7, H-S:

Slower growth

THERE is nothing virtuous about perpetual growth — it is a cancer eating away at the world’s environmental balance, its diversity, its flora and fauna and its moral compass.

Once there may have been a need for growth, but that need has passed and growth is now more about wanton greed.

The planet is all we have and in a more enlightened and responsible era, growth will be condemned.

– Bruce Mullinger, Kurnell, NSW

2/8, The Age:

Growth is abnormal

IRRESPONSIBLE levels of population growth, encouraged by state governments, have resulted in increasing difficulties for residents, particularly in the outer suburbs (“Northern growth corridor residents driven to despair”, 1/8). It is negligent in the extreme to send people to the outskirts where infrastructure is inadequate. There has clearly been a lack of foresight as to how the city can continue to function with never-ending growth.

It is a no-brainer that transport infrastructure and services such as kindergartens are required before people move in to an area. If the necessities are not put in place first, the people of Melbourne will be living in a constant state of deficit of those elements that make a reasonable urban life possible. According to demographer Graeme Hugo, Australia’s annual rate of population growth is more than three times the average of advanced countries. It is time our politicians and planners stopped treating this as normal.

– Mark O’Connor, Lyneham, ACT

A related article from that link noted that almost 1000 people a week are immigrating to Melbourne (from interstate and overseas). No wonder traffic has become almost gridlocked in many areas, and housing unaffordable.

Melbourne was also recently voted most livable once again. The city is still much better than many others in the world – one reason being its relatively small population and low-density layout – but its livability is rapidly being eroded due to population growth and urban densification.

4/8:

Planetary predators

BARNABY Joyce is right when he says the $244 million threshold for an assessment of a proposed farmland purchase was so high it was ridiculous (“Hands off farm: Coalition”, 3/8). Globalisation has given rise to planetary predators trying to pry open weak national borders. Foreign owners of agricultural land will give priority to their populations, and only sell the leftover to Australia.

There is also prevalent an assumption that because we now produce more food than we need, this scenario will continue, despite climate change and global population growth.

Brazil and Argentina, poorer nations than Australia, have limited foreign land grabs. No agricultural land can be bought by foreigners in China. Australia is a leader in harnessing the short-term profits from globalisation, to our detriment.

– Vivienne Ortega, Heidelberg Heights

Selling off valuable arable land to other countries is foolish in the long-term for food security reasons. I wonder, though, if the government has plans to re-appropriate the land if the food security situation ever gets really dire?

14/8:

Discard convention

THE simplest and obvious solution to the boat influx is to withdraw from the 1951 Refugee Convention. Having an international organisation dictate to us on this global problem is inappropriate and contrary to our sovereign interests. We should be free to make a deal with Malaysia or Indonesia.

People smugglers see Australia as a “rich” country, an “immigration nation” and a soft target for resettlement. Yet this country is losing jobs, thousands of people a year are being turned away from housing and homelessness services, infrastructure is under pressure, and food security and environmental concerns in a continent largely composed of semi-arid desert are growing.

We should discard the UN convention and replace it with an orderly processing queue offshore. We could easily accommodate more refugees if we slashed our heavily imbalanced permanent skilled migration program, and our family reunions and unlimited temporary employer-sponsored intake.

– Vivienne Ortega, Heidelberg Heights

18/8:

Sort out our backyard

MICHELLE Grattan makes a valid point about the need to provide services, education and training for asylum seekers on Nauru and Manus Island (Comment, 17/8).

However, we need to look at the wider picture in our own cities. In Melbourne there have been reports of troubled youth in western suburbs who don’t have access to these services, education and training. A report on housing shortages for the disadvantaged this week highlighted further problems. Surely we need to look after our own backyard before we provide money for refugees who may or may not end up coming here. There is a limited amount of government money; it should be spent first on much-needed infrastructure to help those already living here.

– Irene Ritchie, Balaclava

I have been mostly refraining from commenting on the farcical situation involving asylum-seeker boat arrivals, but the situation is well and truly out of control (nearly 7000 arrivals this year alone). I can only feel exasperation at weak-willed Government policies that are all but encouraging this. Some idealistic fools in the Green political party are just as bad on this issue – they practically want to throw open the borders to all. Another concern is that many already in Australia are becoming a part of a disadvantaged underclass here. To put it bluntly, we can’t take in everyone in the world who wants to come here, not if we want to retain some quality of life and maintain the public services and welfare systems we have now. My own policy would be to withdraw from the Convention and refuse to take any illegal/boat arrivals (I could imagine the outcry at that!) – only accept applications when done the proper way.

I am also baffled by those who support illegal immigration (which is a massive problem in the USA) – they don’t seem to understand the meaning of “illegal”. Problem is, if you criticize their policy you get branded as “racist” and “xenophobic”, even if this never enters your argument.

If you’re thinking of moving to Melbourne …

Please don’t! That’s my reaction when I see threads on that topic on forums such as r/Melbourne, though I refrain from saying thus as I will inevitably get downvoted. I might sound churlish, but almost 1000 people a week are arriving, as reported in The Age and Herald-Sun today: “Growth pains on the city’s fringe” and “Booming in the ’burbs” – the latter reproduced below as it is not online:

THE booming outer suburbs have helped Melbourne post the biggest population gain of any capital city in the past decade. Almost 650,000 extra residents moved to Melbourne in the 10 years to June last year, pushing the total population up 18 per cent to a whopping 4.17 million. Census figures released yesterday show the top five areas for growth nationwide were all on Melbourne’s outskirts.

South Morang recorded the biggest increase, with the number of residents up 32,200. Point Cook, Caroline Springs and Tarneit in the west followed with growth figures of more than 20,000.

Demographer with id Consulting, Glenn Capuano, said affordable housing within 25km of Melbourne’s centre was helping lure residents from Sydney, where prices were much more expensive. An economic downturn in southeast Queensland was also behind the influx. It is expected to push Melbourne’s population to five million by 2025.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics figures showed inner-city development was further fuelling the population increase. The Docklands recorded the state’s fastest growth, with the area’s population almost 40 times higher than it was in 2001. Taylors Hill, Cairnlea, Point Cook and Tarneit were the next fastest.

Property Council of Australia (Victoria) executive director Jennifer Cunich said more infrastructure was needed for Melbourne to keep pace with its rapid growth. Ms Cunich said toll roads and government partnerships with the private sector were among ways to accelerate investment.

Rachel Mcminimee, who moved to Tarneit from the Dandenongs with husband John 10 years ago, said access to work and the city were big drawcards.

Melbourne’s population gains dwarfed increases in the state’s regional population, which rose about 6 per cent to 1.37 million.

Perth was the nation’s fastest growing capital, with the population up 26 percent, ahead of Brisbane. In NSW, 75 per cent of the state’s population growth was in Sydney. The city now has a population of 4.61 million.

Road traffic has become horrendous and infrastructure is simply not coping – and governments will never manage to catch-up with the unwanted growth. I have lived here all my life and can emphatically assert that quality of life is eroding rapidly and the crowding is extremely stressful and anger-inducing. We are not yet at the level of crowding of megacities of the world, but it seems that government and business wants to make Melbourne that way.

Collected letters

Collected letters

Herald-Sun, 25/6:

Population alert

THE clowns are again reiterating climate-change nonsense, this time in Brazil. A waste of time and effort.

Who will be the ring master and both espouse and support our planet’s main problem, overpopulation? Poland has dispensed with the warming nonsense and others will follow. Nothing we do will affect the planet other than reducing population.

Please, one world leader stand up and promote population reduction. I know the Chinese are. Where in the developed world is the fortitude for the same? Your top hat awaits.

– Tim Stafford, Mt Eliza

27/6:

Tax welcomed

AS SOMEONE fortunate enough to have received a scientific education to university level, I do not feel we have a right to ignore environmental concerns in our quest for future existence on this planet.

It does concern me that various high-profile columnists espouse a mantra of continued population and economic growth, with their costs of unsustainable consumption and environmental change.

I for one do sleep more soundly at night with the thought that our government is implementing a carbon tax, no matter how ineffectual, as it is a start to recognising something that seems increasingly to be affecting us all.

Maybe it is time we all became more scientifically literate.

– Jim Royston, Heidelberg

Three weeks ago, the Victorian Bailleu government announced it would be rezoning yet more valuable farmland and green wedges around outer Melbourne for housing to accommodate the ever-growing population. Various developers, many of whom are lobbyists, will benefit, but the environment certainly won’t. A later article noted that “Urban spread poses new threat to endangered frogs”, but the government apparently does not care – for them, growth must come at any cost. I can feel only despair and anger at being so powerless to stop this destruction.

The Age, 14/6:

Boundary is a rubbery concept

DOES the state government have a mandate to open up thousands of hectares of green wedge land and farmland (“Government shifts green wedge boundary”, The Age, 13/6) for housing on the metropolitan fringe? Where is the democratic consultation and what are the long-term benefits of its plans?

What Planning Minister Matthew Guy considers “anomalies” were actually planned by the Hamer government to prevent Melbourne becoming a monolith of housing and concrete. There’s no “logic” in grabbing thousands of hectares of “logical inclusion” from green wedges, but there is pure greed for growth.

This extension of the urban boundary will be the fourth time it has been shifted since the Bracks government introduced it in 2002, so there’s no real boundary - it’s an imaginary rubbery line that expands with market forces and urban obesity.

When no one is in charge of properly regulating natural resources, cities grow in ways that are utterly unpredictable and without regard to optimising resources. Nature functions on balance, and perpetual growth is not natural. We could suffer the same fate as any other species whose habitat is destroyed by the blind pursuit of excesses.

– Vivienne Ortega, Heidelberg Heights

Try before you buy

PERHAPS there should be a scheme to allow people to try living on Melbourne’s furthest fringes for a week or so to see before they buy if they have the mental and physical stamina it takes. Try for a week driving to work on a scarcely moving freeway. Or be at the station by 7 a.m. to get a park and a spot to stand up in the train for 40 kilometres to the city.

Try booking your child into kinder or school and have a look at the sheer size of such educational facilities. (Note that size does not always equate with quality). Sit for hours in the only hospital’s emergency department. It is looking less and less appealing isn’t it? Perhaps we should encourage the Planning Minister and Premier to live such a week. It might make them less keen to jam more and more people into the city’s under-resourced fringe.

– Clancy Briggs, Berwick

Toxic consequences

IF I approached the state government with a planning proposal that would not only increase the cost of food, but also the levels of respiratory disease and other health problems, I would be quite rightly shown the door.

But this is what will transpire with the Baillieu government’s vision for greater urban sprawl and freeway development, concreting over Melbourne’s green wedges and farming belt to increase the costs of fresh produce and the levels of atmospheric toxicity.

The market will now capriciously determine all the worst possible scenarios, favouring short-term housing booms over long-term food security, freeways to the exclusion of rail infrastructure.

You’d think that with a degree in architecture, Ted Baillieu would possess some environmental sensibility that might embrace state decentralisation and a respect for the primacy of planning, but it seems not.

– John Ashton, Fitzroy North

A new model sorely needed

PLANNING Minister Matthew Guy says 37,000 lots of land will be developed over 30 years to house more than 100,000 people. This might boost the housing industry, but once the houses are built, there are no guarantees of employment near or far from the houses.

An economy largely dependent on land tax and stamp duty means perpetually being strangled by the challenges of meeting the costs of urban infrastructure, creating jobs in a declining job market, and relying on the cash flows generated by continually stretching the urban boundary. A report by National Australia Bank on Victoria’s health says the state faces challenges as the worst performing state, and that’s despite churning out more houses and land than we can currently sell. We obviously need a new economic paradigm not dependent on paving over irreplaceable open space just to create more empty houses.

– Jenny Warfe, Dromana

Housing vs. farmland

“The fertile fringe”, The Age, 26/5. Melbourne’s future food security was the focus of this in-depth article on the weekend. The inexorable spread of population-growth-spurred housing developments are consuming the fertile farmlands around Melbourne like fast-growing cancers. It shows an utter lack of foresight and planning from State governments, who seem only concerned with shoehorning in as many people as possible rather than trying to stabilize population growth, and the influence of greedy developers who are only concerned about making profits. Another growing threat is coal-seam gas and other mineral mining developments.

Australia initially seems to be a big continent with lots of space, but – as has to be pointed out again and again – much of it is desert with little fertile land, as this article extract notes:

We are being cautioned, however, against complacency. The Prime Minister’s own Science Engineering and Innovation Council has warned that Australia’s food capacity faces a challenges with a population forecast to rise to 40 million as fertile land is undermined by factors such as land degradation such as salination, and urbanisation.

Australia is one of the driest continents on earth. Its soils are ancient and depleted, and just 6 per cent of its total area, 45 million hectares, is arable land. Most intensive agriculture occurs on the fertile soil on a relatively thin strip of land along the coastal fringe. It is an area heavily and increasingly contested.

Australia is also among the most urbanised countries on earth, with the vast bulk of its population huddled on this coastal strip, their homes competing for space with farms, roads, factories, offices, shops, car parks, golf courses, native forests, plantation forests, native grasslands and national parks. Victoria is the most densely populated state, with more than 1500 new residents arriving weekly.

Under the same coastal band are vast seams of brown coal that have provided the fuel to power Victoria for decades and are now being eyed for additional uses, including gas. […]

In his many journeys to and from Melbourne, Vizzarri often ponders what has been lost under the housing and industrial estates he passes. “Australia is a big country,” he observes, “but all its people are concentrated on the eastern seaboard and that’s also where our best land is. I’d prefer that food going to Melbourne is produced on the outskirts; it was once upon a time.”

(If you were paranoid, you’d think it were some conspiracy to make Australia dependent upon imported food.)

You certainly can’t say that authorities and businesses have not been warned. But they seem to prefer to stick their heads in the sand and pretend we can carry on with this reckless growth and development indefinitely with no consequences.

Contrast this to the idiotic statement PM Julia Gillard made a few weeks ago that “We can be food bowl of Asia”; also “No reason why we can’t become a global food superpower”.

We know that global demand for food will escalate dramatically in the coming years, as the world population heads for 9 billion, while scarce resources of arable land and fresh water will become even more scarce. It isn’t just about sheer numbers, however, it’s about the changing nature of these populations.

In China, it’s planned that a further 350 million people will move – the largest internal migration in human history - from the countryside to the cities by 2030. This means fewer farmers and more consumers. Of the 580 million people living in south-east Asia, a quarter do not yet have access to electricity. As an Asian middle-class rises, with its associated consumer needs, the demand for food, energy and other resources is going to dramatically escalate.

As a planet and as a nation, we don’t have a choice – we simply must do much more than is being done to help feed a hungry world, and notwithstanding the obvious challenges and the doomsayers, we believe that we can.

WTF? I don’t see it as our responsibility to feed that region or any other if countries can’t or won’t contain their population growth. They should take responsibility for their own self-inflicted problems, not expect other countries to bail them out.

Letters in response, 28/5:

Miserable Melbourne

The 7:30 Report for 27/4 featured an infuriating interview with Planning Minister Matthew Guy. Dismayingly but predictably, the only message he emphasized is finding ways to “accommodate” the increasing population, not try to reduce growth. Increasing population by immigration and birthrate is “sustainable” – yeah, right (not!) He and others in government and business are clearly trying to brainwash citizens into regarding growth as inevitable. Marvelous Melbourne is fast becoming Miserable Melbourne. An earlier article, “Make room: state population set to soar”, The Age, 24/4, gives no good news.

Collected letters

Herald-Sun: