The sector in Australia that has the most costly dependency ratio must be the property sector, since it costs all Australians an enormous and unreasonable amount just to cover the cost of land for housing, business and agriculture. Most of the very high costs involved are completely unnecessary, except in the eyes of greedy developers and their hangers-on. The only reason that the costs are so high is that the industry wants it that way and our state and federal governments are in cahoots with it.

Sweden has had taxes on carbon emissions since 1991 but claims to have an economic growth rate of 40%.
At the same time it has not allowed its population to become outsized and guarantees its citizens housing and income.
It has a multi-party democracy.
Compare these qualities of life and environment and characteristics of the economy in Sweden with Australia's winner-take-all cannabalistic economy and politically forced population growth in a media-plutocracy.

New research looks at the impact of immigration on social housing in the United Kingdom. Proportion of foreign born in social housing rises 50% in ten years. This is relevant to Australia and most English speaking countries since they have inherited from the United Kingdom housing and population and citizenship policies and laws.

The propaganda against the 1/4 acre block started a few decades ago. - appearing as opinion pieces in newspapers. I believe this propaganda was aimed at very ordinary people in suburbs with traditional blocks. It was to prepare them to relinquish this lifestyle and for their children not to expect it in the normal course of events. It wasn't aimed at the rich; it was aimed at ordinary people.

The growth model produces extensive areas that are riddled with debt and have no genuinely productive function or options by which to repay that debt. The extremity of circumstance shown in these videos also presents a new, terribly real, but currently unreported wave of refugees - the repossessed homeless.

"Everything that makes our city the great place to live, work and raise a family, is potentially under threat if population growth and urban sprawl continue at the current rate. We must implement a strategy to control population growth, urban expansion and development. Our way of life, open spaces and infrastructure cannot be sacrificed on the altar of ever expanding population. We have a responsibility to secure our city’s future through thorough, thoughtful and detailed planning. This planning should not include an expanding Melbourne waistline." (Kelvin Thomson MP, Federal Member for Wills, "Five Million is too many: Securing the Social and Environmental Future of Melbourne: Submission to the Urban Growth Boundary Review, July 2009)

Developers, led by Planning Minister Justin Madden, in a move reminiscent of Hitler's tanks on Poland, are poised to invade and bulldoze the green wedges to enrich themselves, with the same excuses for aggression of ‘lebenraum’ – living space - despite the objections of the people who live there. Is there a Churchill in Victoria with the guts to stop the bulldozers or will the government sacrifice democracy completely? Here is a submission that spells out what the damage will be if the Opposition allows the government to legitimise the totalitarian aggression of “lebensraum” – Urban Boundaries Expansion.

The Victorian Premier Brumby's Royal Commission into the January-February 2009 bushfires is a mere incident review. If Victoria is to be protected from firestorms in future, it should undertake a root cause analysis, including the numerous past investigations into bushfires, with a view to achieving a cultural shift in rural fire fighting methods, resourcing and emergency management and into ecology management, housing approvals in bushfire prone areas, building design in bushfire prone areas, in bush arson criminology and into serious resourcing of rural fire management.

Did you know that Australians have until 15 June 2009 to complain about their declining human rights?
There are avenues for people concerned about the government's big population policy and its effect on human rights to safe clean water, a healthy wild biodiverse envelope, kind treatment of farm animals, functioning democracy not overwhelmed by commercial interests, the right to local self-government, to affordable housing etc to get demands on public record via the National Human Rights consultation.
It could be our last chance. UPDATE 7 Sep 2009: Note that a submission based on this article has been published as Submission # AGWW-7SM63S on the National Human Rights Consultation pages. Please support its content if you agree with it.

Did you know that Australia is conducting a Human Right's inquiry? There are some very good submissions already and we reproduce one here, by Sally Richardson, "Housing as a fundamental human right - submission to the Human Rights Inquiry, Australia." The inquiry makes recommendations to government and Australia's government is very good at ignoring citizens' opinions, but if we make a very big fuss it may be possible to claw back some democracy and citizens rights in this country. The rumour is that Murdoch doesn't like the idea, so it must be a good one.

The costs of environmental destruction wrecked by the growth lobby in the name of 'development' are huge and felt by many people and other creatures on a daily basis, long after what they loved or needed is covered in concrete and roads. Without the growth lobby, we would have environmental peace and democracy in this country.

Rudd and the banks' 'solution' to poverty, debt and homelessness is no solution at all. It drives up the mortgage burden in the long-run and relies on business as usual returning in an increasingly uncertain future. Forget debt, let's dump the banks.

The former Premier of New South Wales, Bob Carr, once offered Australia a choice. It could sustain jobs and economic security by using its brains, by being a smart economy, by adding value to the products it produces and by transforming manufacturing. Or it could continue to be a “lazy Australia” that depends on job growth simply by driving up population numbers and depending on the growth you get by building homes and shopping malls. ... That the home building industry is the prime mover and catalyst of our ecological ruin was never more clearly illustrated than by statements recently made by University of West Florida economist Rick Harper, director of the UWF’s Haas Centre for Business Research.

The bizarre politics of immigration in Italy, known in Europe for its porous borders.

It is predicted that a new house will have to be on the market for a year before it sells now in France.

On December 4, 2003, Australia’s population was estimated at 20 million and projected to reach about 30 million by 2050. Slightly less than 50 per cent of this growth rate resulted from net overseas immigration. By 5 November 2007, Australia’s population had ballooned by more than one twentieth of itself (or 5.66 per cent) to 21,131,216 and was projected to reach 34 million by 2050. In fact, with that growth rate of 1.5 per cent per annum, it is on course to double within less than 50 years. Annual immigration has been responsible for more than half this growth, even though the birth-rate had increased in a context of misleading pronatalist propaganda.

According to the Bayside Bulletin Newspaper, the vote of two councillors who had formerly favoured approving the expansion of the existing Mount Cotton Quarry into a rainforest-destroying superquarry, may change in response to concerted community oppostion. Nevertheless it is still important that the pressure be maintained.

The government-owned Housing Trust of South Australia never cost South Australian taxpayers a cent, yet for decades was able to provide affordable good quality housing to all sectors of South Australian society. Money that would have been unproductively invested in property speculation in the Eastern states was, instead, directed towards establishing viable manufacturing industries in South Australia.