Sex is a voluntary act, therefore children are discretionary.
In an already grossly overcrowded planet, the human motivation to have many children in order to support a family is a backward primitive tradition that is an unsustainable, selfish burden and impost on the planet. But it is clearly the responsibility of governments to control.

The key problem is that delinquent governments ignoring their family size excesses and their population excesses keep receiving generous hand outs from the global community such as the United Nations and the World Bank - as if to confirm - it's ok, keep breeding!

"When Julia Gillard hurtled towards the Governor General on July 17, she knew an early election would keep the Stable Population Party of Australia name off the Senate ballot paper. But it did not stop all of our party candidates from standing." SPPA - Commit to a stable, sustainable, open and tolerant Australia.

"The growth lobbyists will tell us that we can solve our problems by converting to “clean coal” technologies or nuclear power, building more high rise, producing desalinated water at $10 litre (who knows?), installing “smart” electricity meters, piping water from the Northern Victoria to Melbourne, importing more food on more and bigger ships etc." Federal Candidate, Jenny Warfe writes, "I'm looking forward to a different way of 'moving forward.'"

Population sociologist Sheila Newman's talk, "Stable Population dynamic demystified", presented fascinating original material using social and biological research showing how most animals, including humans, can maintain steady state populations in different environments and conditions. Whilst showing how small populations can be maintained, it failed to bear out Hobbs' dismal prognostications.

Of the over 5700 articles that I have seen fit to archive in the past four years, two or three dozen stand out for their insight. But of those, five in particular remain conspicuous for their novelty or their ability to change perceptions or misperceptions. They were the right articles for the right time.

ABC TV's Tony Jones' current affairs debate this evening provided firstly prominent Australian, Dick Smith, with a heart felt concern about the uncontrolled, unplanned immigration surge impacting Australia, then a rigorous but too brief a debate from nevertheless a fair cross section of what appeared to be informed observers. Useful issues were presented from many quarters.

One key observation is that Dick Smith, who dared to initiate the debate and invest much in the documentary, insightfully concluded that at least Australia is mature enough to start publicly debating the subject. What needs to be thought through next is a national plan for population into the medium term future. Well done Dick Smith for your leadership on this critical issue!

Update and mainstream press online comment opportunityLeader Newspaper 2 August coverage of Protest March to Alistair Harkness's office, Frankston Demonstrators walked from Shannon Mall to ALP member, Alistair Harkness's office. The reason for demonstrating was to highlight the failure to defend nature by our Victorian Government, which Alistair Harkness represents in Frankston. This demonstration was related to the violent destruction of Westerfield Bushlands and of democracy in this connection. (See this article.)

'It may be tempting to believe our 4WD has bumped over a wombat.' (from an article in a magazine). Tempting? Roadkill is driving some species towards extinction. Too few safe corridors for animals to find more food. Too many cars and trucks on many more roads through their habitats. How about a campaign to stop carelessness about road-kill?

This morning Planning Minister Madden’s revised Planning Amendment, now re-badged VC 68, was fast tracked through Parliament with the support of the coalition - Liberals and Nationals – who had, over the past year, held out against inducements to approve this toxic planning amendment. (Only the Greens and DLP MP’s stood firm.) This represents a catastrophe for Melbourne as it will see rezoning of land from rural to residential on the City’s fringe and so extend our notorious urban sprawl.

What Paul Kelly ofThe Australian writes about Canada in his article, 'Small thinking in great leap backwards', is a blatant lie, says Canadian Tim Murray. "It's all too reminiscent of What Malcolm Muggeridge wrote about the way British socialists romanticised Stalin's Russia.

In our one-party growthist state, left and right factions wage a phoney battle of whether to grow the energy pie to satisfy growing demand or to slow down that growth with more conservation measues. But conservation only postpones the day of reckoning. It is time that we stopped growth at its roots.

Photos by Jill Quirk added on 21 July. Latest Update: Leader Newspaper 2 August coverage of Protest March to Alistair Harkness's office, Frankston This will make you angry. In the first project to come under the notorious "Major Transport Facilitation Act," bulldozers move in to nationally significant heritage Westerfield before the Heritage Council Decision comes out. Picket line ongoing, since 5 July. Contacts for the picket site: S Walsh Mobile: 0405 380 312 Also Gillian Collins Pines Protectors 0414 309 960 and Jim Kerin Defenders of the South East Green Wedge Mobile 0409 501 764. Original notice was from Julianne Bell, Secretary, Protectors of Public Lands Victoria Inc.
PO Box 197, Parkville 3052, Mobile: 0408022408

"Each of these appointments brings a wealth of knowledge and experience on population issues and will be vital in development of a comprehensive sustainable population strategy," Mr Burke said.
We cannot doubt the integrity and/or qualifications of at least some of the panel members to give a balanced viewpoint, but surely, considering that we live in a democracy, the majority should decide?

Garrett Hardin famously wrote that no one ever died from overpopulation. Reading the rash of autopsies on the failure of foreign aid to cure Africa of poverty, one would gain the same impression. The lack of family planning is not even on the radar. Baffling.

The Australian Growth Lobby has only a couple of primitive weapons - calling the PM a racist and misrepresenting the figures. The other side has all the good arguments, as well as truth on its side. This article analyses the childish statistical misrepresentation and social innuendo in the 5 July 2010 Australian Financial Review editorial, "PM's own goal on population."

There is now a surfeit of "green living" tips that adorn the websites of environmental NGOs and corporations alike, all eager to tell the carbon-obsessed how much more responsible they can be by changing their consumer habits. Conspiculously absent, however, is any suggestion that you might limit your family to one child or that the Minister of Immigration might change his lifestyle of opening the floodgates to incoming footprints from other lands so that they can multiply their ecological impacts upon arrival. The whole exercise is classic displacement behaviour---a feel good distraction from the nasty task at hand: keeping our numbers down.

Population growth costs you and me: "In the last 10 years rates have risen by over 100% which is more than almost every other consumer commodity. This includes hospital and medical services, health services, education, food, alcohol, tobacco, petrol, gas and electricity, restaurants meals, take away fast food, domestic and international holidays, clothing and footwear, household appliances, and motor vehicles." (Alan Nelsen, Coordinator McCrae Action Group and Secretary Mornington Peninsula Ratepayers' & Residents' Assoc Inc.)

Australians need help from the world's ecologists! Royal National Park, known to many tourists as the closes to Sydney, is the world's second-oldest National Park and Australia's first. It is under threat through adjacent overdevelopment by the growth-mad New South Wales government. Even Australia's primeminister doesn't want growth now and Sydney's expansion must be stopped. Royal National Park is of world class historic and ecological significance and it is incomprehensible and alarming that the NSW Government is allowing development to encroach.

Grandiose fantasies about filling up a continent to create a great and powerful nation are not exclusive to Australia. Demographic hubris is alive and well in Canada too, and even now, after the loss of 20% of our best farmland to development, with more than a thousand species at risk and an immigrant population that has, over the last two decades, generated four times as much GHG emissions as the Albert Tar Sands megaproject, there are people who believe in a Big Canada concept. Irving Studin of the University of Toronto is one of them.

For those who follow the stock exchange, building materials share values are the key to the boom and bust cycle of Australian (and similar systems) property, infrastructure and construction booms. When building materials values go down we know that overall market demand decline has settled in. It means that the developers and engineers have reduced their forward orders for bricks and mortar. At the same time the States have been told to reduce their own little-known immigrant-sponsorship programs.

"Inevitably when a Prime Minister or a Government says or does something there is a political analysis – Why are they doing this? What are they up to? While this is pretty much unavoidable, I think the explanation here is a pretty simple conjunction of the Prime Minister’s own convictions with the views of the vast majority of Australians." (Kelvin Thomson)

Today, in a press release titled, 'Change of direction on 'Big Australia', Kelvin Thomson wrote: "I am really pleased by the announcement by the Prime Minister that she intends to take a new direction in population policy, and to chart a course away from growth towards sustainability." At candobetter.org we are delighted to be gob-smacked. Here's a pod-cast of the recent Insiders (ABC) program on the change of P.M. for those who are keen to hear more.

To win election to local office requires a fluency in vacuous growthist idiocy, a combination of greenwash and bimbo boosterism. Here is toolkit of ten cliches that are generic to successful political campaigns across the anglophone world. If liberally sprinkled throughout your speeches, you will be guaranteed favourable treatment from the business community and the lap-dog media, dependent as it is on the advertising revenue of the real estate industry.

Every state government in Australia is trying to impose unreasonable and undemocratic population growth and development on Australians. On the heels of the Victorian protests, here is another urgent notice from Geoff Brown in New South Wales about the Sydney Growth Centres.
One of Candobetter.org 's main reasons for existence is to help Australians stop fighting local environmental brush-fires and start targeting the nationally organised arsonists - the Growth Lobby - where it dwells in political parties, government, business and organisations.

Protectors of Public Land, Planning Backlash and Green Wedges Colaition join forces tomorrow (June 22nd) to oppose Amendment VC67, which is being brought to Parliament by Justin Madden (Minister for Planning) the same day. Rally on steps of Victorian Parliament, Spring St., Melbourne, at 12:24 pm for 1 pm start, Tuesday 22 June 2010.

Click image for filmThis film reports on a steep decline in land and housing prices in the US and predicts that they will fall further - by 70 or 80%. It says that if you are investing in a house or simply buying one now, you are going to lose the house because it will lose speculative value. It says that Americans with common sense are simply staying away from buying houses, knowing that they can bring the market to its senses this way. It says that the winners in this will be those who need houses and will soon be able to afford them. The losers - the land speculators; the people who have made money idly out of homelessness; the bankers, the middleclass housing investment wannabes - will lose their money. About time.

In the Culture of Positive Thinking, realism, aka "pessimism", is the new atheism. Refusal to be "positive" and optimistic is a cardinal sin. It is "letting the team down", for the truth cannot be permitted to inhibit morale. Every political party, every church, every fundraiser demands optimism. Bubbly bimbos pop up on every weather forecast to tell us how wonderful our weekend is going to be and unbearably effusive realtors and buoyant brokers present financial Armageddon as a buying opportunity. Even the editors of 'doomsday' blogs call for upbeat messages. Is there anything more absurd that putting a positive spin on a die-off? Most reprehensible, however, is the Tony Robbins or Bernie Siegal school of environmentalism, a branch plant of the Self-Help movement, which seems to argue that green living habits are a substitute for radical institutional change. The name of the game in North America, after all, is not to effect real change, but to feel good about oneself. The Culture of Positive Thinking looks more and more like the old Culture of Narcissism in green drag. As the world collapses around us, we look inward for solutions. Escape rather than engagement is the flavor of the month. Just what the boss ordered.

A common line of argument from those who favor population growth in Australia is that it's all a matter of optimism versus pessimism, and that environmentalists are much too negative. But there are situations where optimism would be better named meglomania.

Overpopulation is an unfashionable topic. Just ask the children or the grandchildren of iconic environmentalists. Somehow the gene for holistic perception has missed them. Or is it the spirit of the times? It seems that while we have doubled our population since the first Earth Day, we have halfed our courage. How can a subject so vital to sustainability become MORE taboo today than it was forty years ago?

The future is much brighter than you think. Your problem is that you lack faith, faith in a Higher Power---your local Planning Department. What we have here, you see, is a failure to communicate. It is time Malthusians drop the histrionics and listened to reason. If they took the time to actually get down on their knees and in total humility surrendered themselves to the Great Planning Authority in heaven they could hear His voice and be happily be resigned to their pre-ordained role as subordinate agents of His will. The GPA knows best. Before Him, there was no city. And then behold, He created it and overnight it was a sprawling megalopolis. Face it, when you lived in a quiet, stable environment, you were lonely. The Creator at City Hall realized that domesticated animals alone could not suffice as adequate company. He knew that you needed six million other humans to jam into the area and take your mind off yourself. And He was right. You hardly have time to think now that you are so busy scrambling to pay for your housing costs. So let urban planners be your guide and your rock.