Podcast #22 – NSW election wrap and One Nation preferences

1. Hi Ben, I think the recording might have been cut-off at the end. I got the same through both my podcaster and player on this site.

2. Yes you’re right. Should be fine now.

3. Good show. Interesting chat about the Greens. Totally agree that the NSW Greens had a great result, especially considering they had a pretty bad campaign that was overshadowed by the Buckingham issue.

   Sustainable Australia is most certainly a racist party who’s values do not align with the Greens one bit. Making noises about caring about the environment doesn’t mean someone is automatically a leftie/greenie/progressive. Sustainable Australia are much closer to One Nation than they are to the Greens.

4. Firefox, Australia has the fastest growing population in the developed world. By choosing to ignore this elephant in the room, the Greens define themselves as an ideologically progressive, rather than environmental party. That’s all well and good, but it ill behoves their supporters to claim that Sustainable Australia is the one “making (insincere) noises about caring for the environment”

5. Australia’s population growth rate has been steady for the last 50 years. Before that it was HIGHER. Concerns about Australia’s population growth is code for concern that the current growth isn’t solely white people like it was in the past. There is however a problem with public infrastructure spending, it’s way down from where it was in the past.

   The Greens do have policies on promoting foreign aid and other programs that have the effect of reducing population growth, especially programs to increase the education, freedom, and independence of women in developing countries. That’s where an environmentalist position on population growth should stop.

6. Peterjk23, Australia has a tiny population inside an absolutely massive county. We should have a population around 50m. I think that’s our ideal size. The problem is not population growth in general, it’s where the population grows and how it’s managed that matters. Govs need to do more to invest in and grow our smaller cities and regional centres. For example, there is room for at least 2-3 cities of 2+ million on the WA coast. There’s also absolutely no reason why parts of inland Australia can’t be populated. I’m not talking about cities all over the country either, just a few. Alice Springs could be Australia’s version of Las Vegas (a large city in the middle of a desert), although without the huge amounts of gambling please. There’s also room for Canberra to grow to 2-3 million, which it probably will anyway considering how rapidly it’s growing already. Adelaide can take another million. Darwin is tiny and is Australia’s gateway to Asia – now there is a city with massive potential! All this whole process requires is progressive, forward thinking and good planning. We need more Canberras (very well planned city) and less Sydneys (a mess due to poor planning).

7. Decentralisation is nice in theory, but its been talked about for decades and NOTHING has happened. Two-thirds of migrants continue to go to Sydney or Melbourne and these will end up like US mega-cities if it continues. How about someone come up with a serious decentralisation plan, including differential tax scales for the regions – which is what would be required – and then we can talk about increasing the population, not the other way around. Where are the Greens policies for this? Why is it racist to want to preserve the character of our urban environment and not to live in boxes and/or travel 3-4 hours a day to and from work?

8. The reason people have to travel for hours to get to work in Sydney and Melbourne is because of poor city planning, not because of immigration. Hypothetically, you could completely stop all immigration and even totally freeze the population at the current number and it would not make one bit of difference to congestion in Sydney and Melbourne. Like I said, we need better city planning and Canberra is a perfect example of how it should be done. Unfortunately, fixing Sydney’s and Melbourne’s problems is not easy at all. They are the way they are and it’s waay too late to go back and plan them properly. The state govs just need to make the best of it and improve what transport infrastructure they can to help the flow of people. Yes, I totally agree with you that we need incentives to encourage people to move outside Syd and Mel and that not enough has been done in this regard. We need to take the focus off the east coast of Australia and get people moving into other areas. There’s plenty of regional areas that could really use some attention. I really think we should try and make Darwin a regional tourism and transport hub. Really it should be much bigger than it is. Cyclone Tracy no doubt played a huge role in stunting it’s growth. Darwin would be bigger now if it hadn’t of been pretty much wiped out. That’s just more of a reason to invest in it though and build it up so it reaches it’s massive potential.

   The various Greens branches have many different policies that are relevant to their state’s cities and towns planning and development. A good example of this is the policies that can be found at the link below, which details the QLD Greens’ plans for their state. A quick search will reveal similar policies from the other state branches of the Greens. Each state and territory is different and thus requires it’s own set of plans. In NSW and Vic the idea should be to encourage people out of Syd and Mel, while in the Northern Territory a big goal should be encouraging more people to move into Darwin from other states. If we could shift a good amount of people directly from Syd and Mel to Darwin then that would go a long way to fixing the issues faced by all three cities.

   QLD Greens’ planning and development policy: https://greens.org.au/qld/policies/planning-development

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