Our Brumby government is bent on growth, and "sustainability" is just a throw-away word with no meaning! Our population is being artifically forced high due mostly to excessive immigration.


A swelling population will not bring "economic benefits" to the average person. Most people know that the contrary is true. The idea that infinite growth will bring infinite economic benefits is totally flawed! The cost of infrastructure will not cover any short-term benefits from more people.



As natural resources become increasingly scarce, they also become more expensive. Land and housing prices have soared, and water prices are set to sky-rocket.



High density living is not "family friendly" and destroying more vegetation and green wedges for housing and infrastructure is completely contrary to any environmental conservation and any addressing of climate change.



Vulnerable wildlife and biodiversity habitat will be become more threatened, and our connection with Nature will further diminish. Already Victoria's environmental reports are abysmal!



Marvellous Melbourne, one of the most "liveable places in the world", under our Brumby's Melbourne@5Million plan, will be a resource for developers, and any benefits will be purely for for them and the building industry, guaranteed Labor supporters

The logic is spot on, and all this would apply equally in the U.S., except the U.S. seems even more immune to logic than Canada and Australia. This type of frank discussion of the issue is almost never found there. All I can add is the end of growth is near. If we don't learn to embrace it, we will simply go down fighting.

Dave Gardner
Producing the documentary
Hooked on Growth: Our Misguided Quest for Prosperity
http://www.growthbusters.com

Thanks Dave

I have signed up for news updates and forwarded link to others.

Every time OLO debates climate change, I ask the skeptics to justify "business as usual". For all their bluster about science conspiracies and personal insults, not one has made a case for continued pollution and exploitation of our dwindling resources.

VivKay

The rate we are going, Marvelous Melbourne is going make a suburb out of Adelaide. Continuous expansion makes no sense and sooner or later we are gonna fill this petrie dish called Earth if sustainable practices and population are not achieved.

Victoria's growth all seems to be vertical, why are we not moving out into the country and also transferring transport, schools and medical centres out there. it's misguided growth to have it all around the central part of Melbourne.

In most parts of the US they have a lot of regional living, it is very pleasant, but does not return much for developers who want to build compact concentrated housing, for maximum returns. This concentrates profits for developers, builders and unions as well so I wonder if that is part of the attraction.

Fractelle, I see your posts on the various Climate Change articles, though I wouldn't say there is much debate. Some commentry and a hard core of irrational and spiteful posters certainly.

I question the CO2 warming scenario currently popular, but like many others don't see how that makes me as a "business as usual" polluter and I don't understand how you make that leap. It's a completely different issue. To say that questioning the AGW belief is akin to being a rabid polluter smacks of religious intollerence and stereotyping. I could be wrong, but is that what you're saying?

Spot on article !
Melbourne has an inferiority complex in regard to Sydney and this is
what drives the growth is good project.
All those slogans about Melbourne is the, Sports, fashion, business,
you name it, capital of Australia has got them into this growth bind.
The aim should be to reduce population or at least keep it static.

There has been a lot of discussion in Sydney about trying to get
migrants to go somewhere else such as Melbourne.
However the politicians do not have the courage to call a halt.
If Melbourne wants to be the biggest city in Australia, then let them.
It will be to their shame in the long run.

In any case all this discussion, just like the pollies, ignores the
elephant in the corner.
Peak Oil appears to have happened last year.
When depletion starts, there will not be the money to build more
suburbs, nor will there be the materials to build housing on the
scale to accommodate large migrant intakes.
Migration may well stop also as travel becomes more expensive and
difficult.

There will be a major restructure of society and the way it works
and feeds itself. Building new suburbs will just not be on the radar.

Great article.

It is often said that Australian lacks a population policy. I would argue that the political establishment in this country does, in fact, have a de facto population policy: bring in as many people as quickly as possible. It is an unspoken policy rarely enunciated in public. Aware that ongoing mass immigration - the driving force behind population growth - is generally unpopular with the Australian public, federal and state politicians on both sides of the political divide have assiduously avoided developing an open policy by means of electoral and other consultative mechanisms, preferring instead to devise immigration policy behind closed doors. Immigration policy is conducted as if it were none of the general public's business.

Such an approach has allowed successive governments to avoid explaining why they believe Australia needs to be running one of the largest per capita immigration programmes in the world.

If Australia was to have an open and honest debate about immigration and population, I am certain the case against ongoing immigration-driven population growth would prevail. As far as I can see, there is no convincing justification - economic or otherwise - for the ridiculously high levels of immigration that successive federal governments have inflicted on this country. For the general Australian public, mass immigration brings much pain with little gain. It drives down wages, pushes up the cost of housing, strains our public infrastructure and services, worsens urban congestion, increases our national carbon emissions, exacerbates our water scarcity problems, leads to the clearing of more land for urban sprawl, adds to our national current account deficit, undermines social cohesion, erodes our shared sense of nationhood, and seriously degrades our quality of life in general.

The sooner the issues of immigration and population are brought out into the public domain, the sooner Australia can work toward implementing immigration and population policies which actually serve the public interest, not special interests.