crises and how to handle them

There is little doubt to anyone in Australia that our population is becoming an issue for us. While our (most vocal) neighbors may perhaps wonder just why this is (when looking at raw statistics) with our population being only a nudge over 20 Million.

Surely it would be possible to have more in all our space.

Well firstly I'll say maybe not and secondly I'll say why do we want to? If keeping up with the Joneses (population) gives us a neighborhood like this


then I for one don't want to live that way.

Then there is the small matter of deserts (like the Simpson) which take up a vast area of the middle of our continent.

I've marked in red on this figure the extent of desert lands in Australia.

If people could live there easily, then I guess that they'd already be doing it now ... wouldn't they?

So this leaves us with some major issues such as water and a land mass which statistically seems big but has some unfortunate facts about it which make it less livable than the environments our neighbours live in ... which of course clouds their perception of the facts.

In coping with our population problem, it would seem that the typical political response to this looming crisis is mouthed well by Anna Bligh who recently said to the effect of

"we can't stop it we can only manage it"

my words not hers, but if you read her above essay "Lets get real on population" you'll get the that picture.

Now maybe from a particular viewpoint that's true. There are other view points however.

One such viewpoint was put forward by Graham Bradley in a column in the Australian. He seems to take the view that the Australian government has had this philosophy of "grow the population" for some time, he writes:

In the early years of our nation there was strong community agreement that Australia had the potential and the need to increase its population. The idea of Australia Unlimited was embraced.[Circa 1901]

...

Later, prime minister Billy Hughes told a population of about seven million Australians in 1937 that "Australia must advance and populate, or perish".

...

The post-war years saw Australians adopt a bipartisan policy of rapid population growth supported by high immigration to enable great nation-building projects such as the Snowy scheme.

and perhaps at 7 million that may have been true. Certainly the Snowy River project was aimed at importing skilled labour.

Now however we have an interesting problem, as we seek people from anywhere and we do not wish to seem biased towards one nationality or another ... dreadfully unfashionable that right now.

A point was raised by one of the respondents to Mr Bradley (who by the way represents the Australian Business Council) that:

The BCA conveniently plays down the serious costs of high population growth - environmental degradation, water scarcity, increased pollution and congestion, and lower housing affordability - claiming that these issues can be easily managed. Yet current Federal and State Governments have failed dismally in providing for the existing population, let alone an extra 15 million citizens!

What will be the BCA's solution in 30 years time when these immigrants grow old, retire and need taxpayer support? More immigration and an Australian population of 70 million? The current population drive is nothing more than a giant ponzi scheme.

Now, if you are not familiar with what a ponzi scheme is, let me quote from Wikipedia:

The term "Ponzi scheme" is a widely known description of any scam that pays early investors returns from the investments of later investors

Of course the reason why its a scam is that the later investors (in this case our children) are always left holding the debts and depreciated values.

Wikipedia has of course multiple languages, its interesting to note the picture of Charles Ponzi in the English wikipedia article:



and in the German, Spanish, Italian and Finnish ones its this:



Looks less like a businessman in there doesn't it. There are quite a good many comments to Mr Bradley in that article, I suggest you read them and see where you sit with the.

Back to handling crises:

So, if our government is taking a Colonial holdover attitude to this problem it causes us problems in the future. We can't just exploit and grow, we need to consolidate and plan.

An interesting example of this is India.

Many suggest that England simply exploited India, that's a matter for conjecture. However what they did do is leave a great legacy of railways infrastructure.

Now that this is in the hands of the later generations (with a massive and increasing population) it is falling into disrepair because they can not afford to keep it maintained even though they need it.

You don't need to travel far in India on the railways to see stations in dreadful repair carriages which are filthy and dangerous conditions everywhere.

We are having troubles right now with our infrastructure, and it does not look like easing. Throwing more people in to the mix (to provide more taxes) will only stretch the rubber band back further. Making the snap back hurt more.

Water and power provision are but two issues facing us right now.

The current government solution to water problems in Australia is to build Desalination plants, which use huge amounts of Electricity and cost billions (of course that would be on a loan...).

When Traveston Dam, the last remaining piece of a water infrastructure package, was blocked by the federal government, Ms Bligh reluctantly proposed construction of costly desalination plants in Brisbane and on the Sunshine Coast from 2016-2020.

...

"We have a number of scenarios, and what we will do is set aside the land that is necessary for new desalination plants," Ms Bligh said, promising that the region would not be put at risk by any decision to delay the construction of the desalination plants.

take a drive to Tugun and ask any local what they think of theirs... a quick google on it will show how much of a disaster that's been ... still that's for our kids to sort out isn't it.

Well, even if they solve the water crisis with Desal plants, we are running short on power to operate them ... which of course can be fixed with spending more (of your and my) money: $100bn needed to keep power on, government warn:

The government has warned of brown-outs and national power shortages akin to the water crisis if $100 billion is not spent on generators in the next 10 years, guaranteeing steep rises in electricity bills.

Power price rises have also been linked to the cost of connecting renewable energy sources, such as wind turbines, to the national electricity grid and cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

Resources and Energy Minister Martin Ferguson said at the weekend that the investment required to avoid power rationing and increase renewable energy "can only be paid for with higher electricity prices".

interesting wording up there ... akin to the water crisis ... perhaps there's a relationship.

So ponzi scheme is starting to be a theory which fits the observable facts.

The difference between the British Colonial Government in India and us is that we don't get to pull out and leave the mess behind (as the Brits did), we (and our children) will be left holding the bag.

Getting back for a moment to the increase of population and my suggestions about preferences; I feel we have swung the pendulum the other way from the "White Australia policy days" to one where we are afraid to say "no, we don't want that" ... allowing us to not discriminate.

Discriminate is not only a dirty word (although the Apartheid era in South Africa shows it certainly can be). Do you choose when you go to the supermarket? Do you not discriminate between one brand or another, making a personal choice based on preference or information?

Applying some discrimination in processing applications for residency is actually a current practice, look at the skilled migration scheme for instance. If you were educated that was a point in your favor. Not a bad thing, but perhaps there is more needed here ... like social values.

Morris Jackson in the comments to the above article makes an interesting and valid point:

Most Australians who were born here and come from families who were here at least in the 1950s do not care where new arrivals come from. BUT they do care about their ability to support themselves without dependence on a decreasing tax base. They also expect new arrivals to understand and accept that the predominant values of Australia are based on Anglo-European liberal democratic ones.

which I think is fair. Thinking back to the Snowy River scheme we got our skilled workers from Europe.

We are told that the rules for migration to Australia are strict and include being able to support yourself and your family. If that is the case, why have we seen increasing numbers of new arrivals who need social security and healthcare cards that entitles them to free medical care while ordinary Australians get squeezed to pay for it.

I would answer his question with the suggestion that perhaps these people are comming from our commitment to refugee intakes.

I think we should have some serious public debate on this issue. If we are going to be doing this there should be agreement on it, there should be understanding of it, and the costs should be clear.

Clearly the Government by itself is doing little to address this issue, so perhaps some pressure must come from the electorate back to our pollies to let them know this is a significant agenda point for us.

I recommend at least reading this interview with Dr Katherine Betts, if not reading her book. She makes an interesting assertion is that main stream Australians have their views sidelined by the "academic set" who argue that we who are "the parochials are just primitives who can't understand the benefits of population growth."

But of course Anna Bligh is right, "The Government" can't just build barbed wire fences and "stop it" ... you can't just turn off a tap suddenly.

Further I believe we live (in Australia) in a democracy, where the Government are not our rulers like ancient Kings but the public servants of the citizens of Australia. So, we need to make clear what our will is on this issue, and set in place the actions which the Governemnt then needs to act upon. Without that it'll be like a tractor going round in the paddock with noone at the steering wheel.

The Australian Government has a history of being a poor reactive machine. Their shameful reactions to the crisis of Japanese invasion in WW2 with the "Brisbane line" was pure gutlessness.

General Douglas MacArthur subsequently claimed that the line was to run from Brisbane to Perth

They rationalized (from Brisbane no doubt) that there was nothing worth keeping up in Qld or West Australia and would have given it away.

Imagine if the Japanese had taken that, with their access to resources and land the pacific war would be changed and if they now had territorial ownership of all the mines in Queensland ... coal, bauxite ... nope, nothing worth keeping up there.

Short sighted is the polite word for that.

Solving our population and environmental management crisis of right now is something which is no less urgent and pressing for all Australians. It takes time careful planning and thought. But we need to start thinking and discussing this now.

I think that much of our policy and future directions needs to have a re-examination. If we don't we may find ourselves in a situation where we have huge debts, social disarray and increasingly degrading our environment (and yes, I mean the urban one too).