Whatever you do, don't mention population...

At a 2020 Planning Forum in Canberra on 27/02/2010, ACT Liberal Opposition Leader Zed Seselja said:

“I believe that a bigger Canberra is a good thing.”

He went on to describe a number of reasons why he believes this. Not mentioned was keeping revenue flows up to the development industry that funds so much of the Liberal Party support mechanisms.

Opposing this line was Mark O’Connor, author of This Tired Brown Land – a book at the vanguard of the argument that population growth is pivotal to all environmental degradation we are suffering and our children will suffer into the future.

Other speakers at the forum appeared to dance around the population issue. It begs the question why?

In one of those curious little coincidences in life, this was summarised quite well in an opinion piece by Melvin Bolton on Science Alert:
“A lot of people make money out of population growth so in their view the more consumers the better and the more pressure on land the greater the rise in its value. That’s the simple reality, but it has an emotive component that is less obvious. Somehow, the promoters of population growth have fostered the idea, deep in the human psyche, that they hold the moral high ground; that nice people can only ever want more people. Those who disagree are suspect. They must hate motherhood, or migrants, or both, and are probably closet racists.


“Politicians loathe being asked about population policy. Green NGOs keep it off their manifestos for fear of losing support. Public figures in conversation quickly change the subject. In Copenhagen the impact of human numbers was officially invisible, despite the best efforts of Sustainable Population Australia and Britain’s Optimum Population Trust.”

Here here! It's like that famous Fawlty Towers skit "Whatever you do, don't mention the war."

To put this into perspective, Kevin Rudd recently announced projections that Australia’s population would swell to 36 million by 2050 – just 40 years! Locally, ACTPLA boss Neil Savery is planning for a 60% population increase in Canberra in the same timeframe.

Anyone in Canberra who thinks Gungahlin is a once-off planning disaster, and everything from here on will be peachy, is kidding themselves. And the older established areas won’t be immune to the effects either. Neither will your children, who won’t be able to afford any home that includes the ‘luxury’ of an actual back yard.

Giving Mr Bolton the last word:

“All this plays back into the hands of the population profiteers. Misinformation is easy to maintain when those who know better prefer to keep quiet.”