NEWS DESK
We’re paying more and more for less and less PLANNING and population issues are back in the spotlight after the state government changed planning laws to allow three-storey houses to be built in the region, sparking concern about overdevelopment. Frankston-based sociologist and author Sheila Newman sounds a warning about unrestricted population growth, land prices and development of food production land. By Sheila Newman AS a fig leaf response to growing unrest about exponential population growth, governments and developers are now suggesting “decentralisation” is the cure for all that ails us from overpopulation. The current plan to “create” (mostly via massive immigration) eight new cities between Melbourne, Canberra and Sydney is a foretaste of the growth lobby’s desire to aim for a population of 100 million in Australia and perhaps 50 major cities within 80 to 100 years. This super growth would be financed entirely by speculating on land costs, with massive profits falling mostly to a few already obscenely rich developers. However, as usual the growth lobby conveniently disregards water, agriculture, and natural and resource environmental costs. Losing land in the countryside to more houses, schools, hospitals, shopping centres and more is no less significant than it is in our current peri-urban areas. As for ongoing adjustments to the urban growth boundary, rezoning rural land to urban residential is threatening Melbourne’s peri-urban food bowl – Werribee, Yarra Valley, Mornington Peninsula, Casey-Cardinia. Up to 50 per cent of Australia’s vegetables are grown on the urban fringe of Melbourne and 17 per cent of Victorian fruit. Greater than 80 per cent of some
types of fruit and vegetables are produced. Production is at $1.3-1.6 billion a year, and supports 6000 jobs. But once converted to housing, the land and jobs are lost forever, entrenching a reliance on imported foods. Since the Menzies government era, the privatisation of land production has evolved into a system of packing more and more people into smaller and smaller areas. It multiplies the dollar value of the land, while massively diminishing the land per person. So most of us pay more and more for less and less. Meanwhile a minority profit obscenely from the growing misery of their fellow citizens and residents. This is essentially what drives the policies for mass immigration in Australia. The costs to business are horrendous (unless they are corporations that invest in land and mortgages). For instance, manufacturers have to pay for their own accommodation, for their business premises, and for salaries that will permit their employees to afford rent or mortgages. These costs ruin many businesses and make us globally uncompetitive since our land, housing and rent costs are among the highest in the world. Abolition of state industrial award systems, redefinition of most state CBDs as “regions in need of immigration”, and Prime Minister John Howard’s use of the Corporations clause in the Constitution means it is
now possible, for the first time since Federation, to import cheap labour to undermine Australian wages. Employers can exploit cheap imported labour, but labour must pay very high rent and mortgages, pitting employers against workers and citizens against citizens. It’s beginning to feel like a return to Dickensian living conditions or feudalism will be the ultimate outcome. Meanwhile, these unreasonable, anti-social land costs (and the population growth-associated inflation of water and power costs) make the pension and welfare system unaffordable, but the problem is then blamed on “dependency ratios” – too many unemployed people, too many old
people, etc. However, if we greatly reduced invited economic immigration (which all the states advertise for – see Victoria’s www.liveinvictoria.vic.gov.au), pensions would be adequate to live on and could possibly even be reduced, and working people would not have to enslave themselves to life-long mortgages. It would also be relatively affordable to start manufacturing businesses and employ people. Twenty-five years ago, when I became worried about population growth in Australia, the plight of wildlife and the loss of green and wild spaces were accepted. Empathy for the environment is disappearing under the walls of masonry and concrete paving of our
once rural areas. As much as it pains me, it is understandable to lose empathy for the environment when there isn’t much left to empathise with. It’s as if wildlife is completely off the radar, and caring about wildlife habitat is just an indulgent wistful pastime. The extremes to which we are now pushed socio-economically and the urbanisation of our values have reinforced our human-centric behaviours – and it is very depressing. Presently, those who hope to protect where we live are relying on a “community engagement” model that is past its use-by date. Previously, when a development was announced, we could have our say about it. Sometimes we even managed to stop outrageous proposals – or at least win major concessions. However, the latest proposed changes to the Victorian Planning Scheme, and many that have already occurred while we have been asleep at the wheel, will completely strip away any rights or tools we thought we had to protect our homes and amenity. The ground has shifted under us so we need, somehow, to be more proactive. A good place to start could be a residents’ bill of rights. Sheila Newman is an evolutionary sociologist and editor of articles on energy, population, land use planning, and resources as well as a news site called candobetter.net. Her books include The Final Energy Crisis (Pluto, UK) and the Demography, Territory and Law series (Countershock Press) on ecological population systems and political outcomes. She has a YouTube channel called queeniealexander2000.
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