The Australian environmental movement is under attack by populationist and anti-immigration forces in a calculated attempt to divide the Green Party vote at the federal election.
The Stable Population Party (SPP), the Stop Population Growth Now (SPGN) Party in South Australia and their mother organisation, Sustainable Population Australia, are 鈥済reen washing鈥 their anti-immigration policies to make them more palatable to the electorate.
population
Dick Smith鈥檚 Population Puzzle, a documentary that aired on ABC1 on August 12, made no modest claims. It went for the direct, hard sell. Its message: 鈥淐utting immigration to Australia is a great product, and you should buy it.鈥
It said a smaller Australia would not solve just one or two social problems, but more than a dozen.
鈥淟unchtime midweek in Campbelltown鈥檚 main street in the heart of western Sydney is a slow-moving affair鈥, the Australian鈥檚 Jennifer Hewett wrote on July 23.
鈥淐ars drive in and out of the one-way street at a leisurely pace. Business is not exactly booming in most of the small, tired-looking shops. There鈥檚 plenty of room on the footpath for pedestrians.鈥
Forget about the climate science and the record high temperatures. Prime Minister Julia Gillard has decided she doesn鈥檛 need a serious climate change policy to win the federal election.
In its place, she kicked off her election campaign on July 18 with a 鈥渟ustainable Australia鈥 policy. It promised a future of low population growth, which 鈥減reserves our quality of life and respects our environment鈥.
Opposition leader and climate denier Tony Abbott was quick to say he fully agreed with this vision, but was even more committed to it than Gillard.
In one of her first policy changes after replacing Kevin Rudd as leader of the Labor Party, Prime Minister Julia Gillard dumped Rudd鈥檚 idea of a 鈥渂ig Australia鈥.
On June 26, Gillard said 鈥淎ustralia should not hurtle down the track towards a big population鈥. Instead, she called for a 鈥渟ustainable population鈥.
Almost four weeks on, however, Labor鈥檚 policy has no details 鈥 just lots of rhetoric designed to pander to fears that immigration (particularly asylum seekers) is causing a raft of social problems.
Peoplequake: Mass Migration, Ageing Nations & the Coming Population Crash
By Fred Pearce
Corgi Books, 2010, 352 pages
Review by Martin Empson
In the 200 years since the Reverend Thomas Malthus first penned his tract, An Essay on the Principle of Population, the question of the 鈥渃arrying capacity鈥 of the planet has repeatedly appeared.
Most recently, mainstream debates around how to solve the question of climate change have boiled down to the simplistic argument that 鈥渢here are too many people鈥.
Despite a promise before the last election, the Brumby state Labor government has introduced legislation to extend the urban growth boundary for Melbourne. Planning Amendment VC 67 expands Melbourne鈥檚 Urban Growth Boundary to accommodate the 284,000 houses the government expects will be needed if Melbourne鈥檚 population reaches 5 million before 2030.
About 70 people from the Green Wedge Coalition, Protectors of Public Lands and Planning Backlash protested against these plans on June 22.