Boazycarp: << Then..instead of the blood soaked killing fields of Camodia we will have the economic and environmental killing fields of Australia, where the possums rule and we need to get the green wombat Oracle's planning permission for our little humpy (which by now is all we can afford) >>

Boazy may have been 'born again' as Polycarp, but he's rapidly reverting to form. Same garbage, different pseudonym.

What's the point?

Cacofonix (I’m an Asterix fan too)
What I wrote was in general. The opinion I put forward was mine and I don't for a moment think it's inviolable. I was just putting some context to the issue.
Raves either bashing up the Greens or defending them a matter of personal opinion often lacking in perspective, logic or deduction for that reason I didn’t express a view. To do so would have been a matter of “just so” (opinion) and no one is ever impressed/convinced by emotive thinking and therefore pointless.

All circumstances are so in a context. That context is the Greens ambitions to gain government on their own merits. To do this they need 50+1 % of the public to support their views. All people are different therefore any organization must compromise to exist. The more people the party wants to represent (logically) the bigger/greater the need for compromise/pragmatism. To a real idealist this is an anathema. That’s why very few parties are truly idealistic. Organizational theory 101 teaches that the 1st priority of an organization is its own survival.

It is naïve to believe that the Greens movement’s perceived ‘strident’ policies would gain enough public support. The Greens would know that a strong stance would lose them the support they need. If they don't compromise on some strident issues they will languish as an eternal minority. As I pointed out population control to the level required to make a difference is politically unsellable, would take too long and isn’t the real issue anyway: How the population BEHAVES is. The greens simply chose to address the route cause which is doable. Like polycarp says if you don’t have the numbers you policies are moot.

I would chose to engineer the appropriate behaviour than take the high stand and achieve nothing. That’s politics in a Democracy not perfect but besides you and I what else is?

I urge everyone to read the full transcript of actor Geoffrey Rush's Speech to a meeting of Melbourne residents protesting against a frenzy of overdevelopment similar to what is happening up here in Brisbane:

http://marvellousmelbourne.org/drupal/?q=node/168

...

You know, with a site like this (marvellousmelbourne.org), I’d like to seek answers, prompt a debate and ask some really big dumb questions that baffle me e.g. We’re told we have to either go OUT or UP because there’ll be a million more people living here within the next twelve years. Has anyone ever asked Is this really such a great idea anyway? How big should a city become? What are the alternatives? I was reading stuff like The Club Of Rome and the predictions of Ralph Nader in the early seventies where the warnings about today’s biggest planetary head-aches were being flagged (food shortage, climate control, and the one everyone seems to have stigmatized - Population Growth) Probably the most serious dilemma of this new century. How come our appointed leaders wants to lower their IQ and arrogantly expand? IS THAT A DUMB QUESTION? Please don’t tell me that the answer’s anything to do with the masculine insecurity that SIZE MATTERS.

...

GEOFFREY RUSH SAYS: SAVE YUNGABA!

Also, Please note, Judy Spence, Geoffrey Rush has just added his voice to the fight to save the beautiful historic Yungaba Migrant hostel which your Government plans, against overwhelming community objections, to sell to the Singapore property development company Australand to turn into a gated community.

http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/news/queensland/star-joins-fight-to-stop-historic-sale/2008/07/13/1215887417280.html

The Yungaba Action Group is organising a legal challenge to the sale. Pleae Donate. For details of how to donate, please visit http://yungaba.org.au/

You know Dagget? Melbourne or every city in Australia was started as a settlement with and on farmland which was capable of growing enough food for it's population.It's only 25years ago when almost every household had a vegie garden.Melbourne has to get it's food now from large industrialised plots or from radiated imports and are largely owned by corporations some of which are international.(money out of the country)
Take the nomads and the animal world for instance, when they outgrow their area (food/water shortage) they move to another spot. If food is not available, the population decreases in seize until better times occur.Nature keeps it in balance.Now you might ask, if most acreages around a settlement has been built into suburbs, which btw are sitting on top of ruined (because of pesticides) old farmland,what is happening to our fertile farmland? Should we go further out and cause more deforestation and destroy our water sources also? I have a feeling that our Melbourne survival rests with
cutting off ALL commercial aquifer water pumping(like coca-cola at Bachusmarsh/Castemaine) as it has been dropping the total ground
water level in the district and is not helping the Murray river.
The more people we get on our shores the worse the problem becomes.
'Just my ounce of spring water worth'

Firstly, I need to correct the clumsy grammatical error in my post of 12 July 2008 11:45:45 PM +10:00 (comment #40557 on this page). I should have written:

Judy Spence, do you believe that was fair to the residents of the Mary Valley (http://www.savethemaryriver.com) who now stand to lose their homes in order that the dam, said to be necessary to supply the water for the extra residents that are now here largely as a result, be built?

(I mis-spelt 'here' as 'hear' and neglected to add 'be built' at the end of the sentence. My apologies.)

Even though I made a mistake, the point I was trying to make still should have been clear and I am still waiting for an answer.

Judy Spence, I have found your Government to have been particular dishonest and evasive in regard to the question of the critical question of population growth. The most dishonest of all in my experience was former Premier Peter Beattie, and Anna Bligh does not appear to have been much of an improvement.

In August 2006, at a public meeting outside Parliament House to discuss the water crisis, I put to Peter Beattie the question: Would he acknowledge that population growth was the cause of the water crisis and would he at least from now on use his authority as Premier of this to discourage further population growth.

He thanked me for asking what he said was a good question. He then told the audience (contradicting the advertisement quoted above and many other stances he had taken in public) that he wished that so many people would not come here. He then went on to say that Queensland desperately needed more skilled people as opposed to unskilled people. Then his argument seemed to morph into an implication that roughly another 1 million residents were required to fix the problems caused by previous population growth!?

(tobecontinued)

(continuedfromabove)

Since then Peter Beattie has openly come out in favour of Australia increasing its population to 50 million as has been discussed on another OLO forum at http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=984&page=0 so clearly when he told me in August 2006 that he wished that so many people wouldn't come here he was being less than forthright.

The residents of the Mary Valley, Wyaralong, the Sunshine Coast, the Gold Coast, West End, etc., etc., etc. are being made, through dictatorial powers assumed by your government, to bear the costs of population growth that your Government has consciously and deliberately imposed upon Queensland.

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Thanks eftnc for your incisive observations. Brisbane has and continues to lose farmland (even if degraded with pesticides and other facets of mechanised agriculture) thanks to the collusion of current and previous Queensland Governments with the property developers. If the Mary Valley is flooded even more valuable farmland stands to be lost along with the endangered lungfish, the Mary River tortoise and the Mayor River Perch all to satiate the greed of the property lobby who are able to profit from the impoverishment of everybody else and future generations.

Redland Shire, with its rich red agricultural soil now largely covered with concrete and asphalt, absurdly has to import strawberries for its annual Strawberry Festival, yet the Queensland Government is attempting to force the popularly elected anti-growth Redland Shire Council to accept unwanted development.