Population increase: kevin Rudd should listen to wiser heads and look at the evidence
19 November 2009
Population increase: Kevin Rudd should listen to wiser heads and look at the evidence
The article by former NSW Premier, Bob Carr, attacking the Rudd Government for pursuing massive population increases must be heeded, says national environment group, Sustainable Population Australia (SPA).
SPA President, Sandra Kanck says the article (SMH Nov 19) is spot on.
“Bob Carr’s comment that a dam needs an EIS, yet half a million extra people each year does not, shows how little the Rudd Government understands or cares about the tight links between population and environmental sustainability. The comparison shows that in this vital area government processes are happening in a factual and intellectual vacuum.
“The Rudd Government has been responsible for an unprecedented increase in business migration without any thought for the environmental or social consequences, be they the rapid decrease in water availability, climate change, loss of species, loss of very valuable and precious farmland, energy costs or housing affordability and clogging of much infrastructure.
“These are policies that will lead us and our children to poverty in a ravaged Nature. Labor backbencher, Kelvin Thompson (Member for Wills), has repeatedly set out in detail why and where Rudd’s plans for a ‘Big Australia’ are environmentally disastrous and without a sensible foundation.
“Kevin Rudd is proving not to be a leader but one who is caught in an old-fashioned time warp. We no longer live in a substantially empty world in which humanity’s impact on the natural environment is trivial. We now live in an over-full world in which our numbers and our per capita demands on Nature are no longer sustainable. Growth is old- fashioned, it is now time to recognise Nature’s limits. It’s time for Australia to show real leadership by observing these limits in its domestic and international political practices.
“It is time for Kevin Rudd to start listening to some of the wiser heads in his party, and time to cut back Australia’s immigration program to sustainable levels” said Ms Kanck.For further comment or information contact:
Ms Sandra Kanck 08/8336 4114 or
Dr John Coulter 08/8388 2153