Barney Foran: Research Fellow, Institute of Land Water and Society, Charles Sturt University.

Carbon tax or not, Australia’s carbon emissions will keep rising, driven by rapid rates of population growth and increasing affluence. Most of the carbon is domestic but we also own the carbon that China and other manufacturers emit when they make stuff we purchase from our malls and big box stores.

The ‘Bigger Australia’ much loved by Kevin Rudd and the top end of town surfaced again in the last federal election when both major parties scrambled for a ‘right-sized Australia’ driven by disenchantment in marginal electorates where services are tight and solutions oft promised.

Unseen in the election dog-whistling was a science-based population futures report, Long-term physical implications of net overseas migration: Australia in 2050, researched and written by Dr. Jonathon Sobels of Flinders University and Dr. Graham Turner of CSIRO and other authors. This was an update and elaboration of CSIRO’s 2002 study, Future Dilemmas.

The new Physical Implications study highlighted the many resource and environmental challenges that come with rapid rates of population growth, in the absence of revolutionary changes, in how Australia conducts its business of day-to-day living. By 2050, these challenges include a doubling to a tripling of greenhouse emissions, a looming oil dependence, increased traffic congestion and critical water shortages in three capital cities.

This is bad news for the legions of corporate suits who see rapid population growth as the only way to maintain their cash flow in an economy based on house building, personal consumption and mining.

The news was so bad that the Department of Immigration and Citizenship (DIAC) chose Christmas Eve of 2010 to release the report with a frontispiece demeaning the science-based modelling as contested, and not to be believed. As judged by a lone economics reviewer, the physical-economy analysis did not conform to the assertions and beliefs of an economics-centric world.

However the three components of the study, while strongly related, were independently sourced thus ensuring greater robustness than if they relied on a single analytical idea. The middle tier or regional scale of analysis in particular gives the key insights for national population policy and the consequences of a bigger Australia. As most inbound migrants ended up in discrete areas of Sydney, Melbourne and Perth, the report found that if things were already partially crook in those areas, it could only get crooker under the rapid population growth that a bigger Australia requires to gather steam.

As most Sydney-siders know, the geography that gives its beauty and attractiveness is also a beast when several million more people have to be settled by 2050. Unless the multi-billions that are promised at each election time are spent quickly, and over and over, the city function and economic product will stall in a gridlock of disgruntled ratepayers in the far-flung suburbs. In western Sydney where most population growth occurs, water and soil quality and biodiversity resources can only trend downwards given the experience over the last twenty years of development.

As cost and time over-runs on its Wonthaggi desalinisation plant dominate the media headlines for Melbournians, they might ponder how many more engineering projects they’ll have to pay for with another two million people. The green wedges, meant to buffer biodiversity losses in the face of development, have been discarded by an incoming government intent on bettering the previous bunch. Still Melbourne has easier topography and better public transit that its arch rival Sydney and with strong ongoing investment, might just retain its liveable city status.

Perth’s long-term future is here now as its second desalination plant nears completion, its surface dams receive trickles rather than floods and its groundwater aquifers approach their extraction limits. The region’s sandy soils transmit sewage and farming nutrients easily and promise increasing eutrophication and algal blooms in its rivers and estuaries. Set in one of the world’s biodiversity hotspots, rapid increases in land clearance to indulge the suburban dream will pressure nature’s diversity even more than in the recent past.

But this future is not hardwired, provided public policy is built on three cores. The first is to stabilise national population to a 26-28 million level by 2050. The second is to be as mean as possible to each Australian by introducing an integrated carbon-water-land taxation base that penalises profligate use of critical resources and provides the funds to refurbish and make anew. The third is to do what we must do and quickly. Ten star houses, nearly independent of power and water grids, are here now. All cities need fluent transport in an oil-lean future, so why not rapid transit for all now? Our households are bulging with stuff we don’t need and don’t want, our bodies also. So why not a lifestyle where enough is enough, rather than more being our common mantra?

Today’s population policy is driven by the Dolly Parton syndrome, where bigger is better even if it is top heavy and somewhat false. Using science to explore Australia’s future gives the view that we’d probably be better off, leaner and smaller. However if Australians want the quality of life we now enjoy, then the challenges are already daunting and we’d better start the grand transition today.

Decisions in the 80s gave the green light to high rise development

Survey after survey has confirmed the sentiment of most Sunshine Coast residents — “We don’t want another Gold Coast.

With some predictions that the population here may reach a half a million by 2030, restraining the aspirations of developers and property marketeers is important for residents, and there are many examples of how the community has worked to prevent the urbanisation of the Coast from top to bottom.

One group of Coolum residents gathered in 2004 and set up Development Watch Inc, its spur to action being an inappropriate development proposed for Mount Coolum. They were perhaps inspired by the bulk of Mt Coolum overlooking this coastal suburb. The prominent peak is now protected as National Park instead of hosting a major development involving chairlifts and restaurants – this was an odious proposal of the late 80s defeated by an irate and determined community.

Coolum itself is far from being the sleepy village that attracted so many who live there. It suffers the ignominy of high rise on the beach as a result of shoddy decision-making by Maroochy Council in the 80s. Now it’s faced with fast-growing industrial and commercial precincts and expanding suburbia.

Development Watch fights to keep it all at bay by making sure that the community is well informed and has a strong voice in making its views known.

The group has about 50 members, they meet in Coolum bi-monthly and take a close look at any applications for development that are inappropriate not just for the Coolum area but also for the wider Sunshine Coast.

Careful monitoring of development proposals is very important, to make sure that they’re in line with the various State Acts and Policies and the planning schemes of the Sunshine Coast Regional Council, and also compatible with community aspirations. Members are adept at reading and understanding the fine print and negotiating the bureaucratic maze.

They keep a keen eye on Council’s website and PD Online – the Council’s self-help service – and pick up development applications of interest at the application stage.  They then monitor the application’s progress through the system and will usually know when the white signs go up.? The group involves the wider community with letter box drops, by getting petitions signed and holding public meetings. They formulate detailed submissions to local and state government to make sure that community views are represented.
Their involvement may not end even when Council rejects an application. Developers will often appeal the decision to the Planning and Environment Court.  Development Watch may then elect to co-respond with Council to provide them with support and to reinforce the community view.  Current applications now before the court range from an application for commercial offices in a residential area at Coolum Beach to a 950 dwelling residential development at Pacific Paradise.

President Brian Raison says that while the primary aim is preventing inappropriate development in the Coolum area, it’s important to have a regional perspective.

“Any major development proposal north of the Maroochy River could have an adverse impact on Coolum residents and businesses.  Even residential developments further afield can affect parking, traffic congestion and liveability in Coolum,” he said.

“Take for example the proposed Caloundra South development – the Coast’s population jumps by 50,000 if it goes ahead. Creating a city the size of Gladstone so close to existing towns will really have a serious effect on liveability along the coast and in the popular hinterland towns.”

Unsustainable population growth is the key threat, according to Mr Raison. With a State Government determined to accommodate huge population increases in South East Queensland, and much the same outlook at the national level (both the Federal Government and Opposition seem to favour a forecast population 60% increase by 2050, which outstrips all other industrialised nations) what’s the best way deal with this?

“For starters, the Federal Government has to be convinced to have a population policy,” said Mr Raison.

“It has given no indication as to how it will stop the ever-increasing tide once its absurd target of 35 million by 2050 is reached.  The country’s post-secondary education system needs serious overhaul so that skilled workers for Australia’s future needs are sourced from within, rather than relying on an unacceptable level of immigrants.

“This is an arid country and we will become a net importer of food unless the Federal Government can think beyond the ballot box and can also dampen the drivers of immigration.?“The Federal view is unlikely to change unless the States understand the problem.  I don’t have a positive view of that happening.  Development Watch is focussed on convincing our Council to maintain its publicly stated policy of determining carrying capacity before committing to development.  With the Department of Infrastructure and Planning having the power to impose development on our Council, this conflict may only be resolved in the courts. That is, if our Councillors have the courage to pursue this course of action.”?Development Watch also sees unrestrained tourism growth as a threat to community liveability and well-being.

“We must have tourism, of course, but there is a limit to the number that can be accommodated,” said Mr Raison.

“Tourist blight – the disease that sees the very things that attract tourists to an area destroyed – is a serious concern of ours.  As an example, Council plans to construct a new airport runway.  Accommodating and amusing the increased number of tourists that will be required to justify expenditure on this project will exacerbate this blight.

“Remember, the Queensland Government requires the Sunshine Coast to have, in 20 years time, the same population that the Gold Coast has now.”?We are keen to hear from residents in the Coolum area who would like to assist in ensuring Coolum remains a great place to live and visit.

Phone Brian on 5446 4493 if you would like more information.

More information about Development Watch

Southeast Queensland is one of Australia’s biological hotspots. It is an area where the sub-tropical and temperate regions known as the McPherson/MacLeay Overlap Zone are a region of diverse landscapes from mountain rainforest to open woodland and wallum wetlands to huge sand islands, mangroves forest, seagrass meadows and coral reefs.

Government reports show many koala populations will be extinct within a few years

It’s not surprising then that the region supports 151 terrestrial ecosystems and a great diversity of species. This richness is recognised worldwide, with southeast Queensland supporting the greatest number of birds in Australia and being botanically one of the richest regions.

However, you would think given this uniqueness and the economic, social and environmental benefits this brings, it would be proudly protected.  On the contrary, only 13.1 per cent of the region’s bushland is protected in National Parks or such like and only 17.5 per cent is in some form of public estate.

The State Government would argue about these figures stating that 80 per cent of southeast Queensland is protected from residential development. But, when you cut through the rhetoric, you soon realise it’s not protected from the impacts of urban growth. Dams, roads, powerlines, pipelines, agricultural and industry are rapidly destroying and fragmenting the little remaining bushland in southeast Queensland.

The fact is biodiversity in southeast Queensland is under pressure from habitat loss primarily due to increased urbanisation, driven by population growth, a fact stated in the State Government’s  State of the Region (SEQ) report.

Another fact is that by 2026 a further 70,000ha of bushland and open space will be lost to urbanisation and, by this time, there will be as much urban land as there is protected bushland estate.

Protecting biodiversity isn’t about protecting the cute and the furry. Protecting our precious biodiversity in southeast Queensland is central to providing people with many economic, social and physical benefits.

The importance of biodiversity to mankind is now more clearly understood and the science around ecosystem services highlights these benefits. Simply put, biodiversity is important for the provision of the air we breathe and drinkable freshwater.

More specifically, biodiversity is responsible for the health of our forests and crops through pollination. There are  hundreds of free services biodiversity delivers and yet State Government planning allows it to be readily destroyed. In essence it appears we are living as though there were no tomorrow.

State planning is currently based upon the fool’s dream of endless growth. The consequence of this is a tragic decline in the diversity of species. No species highlights this better than Queensland’s fauna emblem the iconic koala. The southeast Queensland koala has declined from common to vulnerable.

While being one of Australia’s largest urban koala populations the southeast Queensland ‘Koala Coast’ population has declined by 51 per cent in less than three years with a 64 per cent decline in the 10 years since the original 1996-1999 survey.

The cause of this decline is urban development driven by our unsustainable population growth. Sadly, the State Government is not prepared to stop this growth and government reports show many koala populations will be extinct within a few years.

The story is the same with southeast Queensland birds. Something like 20 or 30 species are in serious decline particularly those reliant upon lowland forests which are subject to the impacts of rampant urbanisation.

This population growth is also impacting upon our waterways. The science shows that urban areas produced more pollution and silt than the same area of farmland.

No surprises then that since 2004 the Healthy Waterways Report card has shown Moreton Bay has gone from a B+ to a D. The situation is grim with the science estimating by 2026 point source and diffuse pollution will increase by 50 per cent and 20 per cent respectively due to population growth.

Sadly if we pursue continued population growth, what made southeast Queensland unique and a healthy place to live will have been replaced by tar and cement. One has to ask is this what southeast Queensland residents really want.

If there is a take home message it is if we continue to grow we will destroy our biodiversity and can only expect southeast Queensland will become an increasingly greyer and grottier place to live.

Read more about Simon Baltais

From an economic perspective the population debate is all about scale — economies of scale and the opposite, diseconomies of scale are, the key concepts.

Illustration by Alex Mankiewicz

From the day ex-Treasurer, Peter Costello, made the extraordinary plea “to have one for the country”, we have politicians on both sides, business leaders and media commentators calling for population growth.

It is no longer the ‘populate or perish’ rhetoric. We have come to realise wars are not won with a mass of ground troops supported by a thickly-populated countryside.

We have also come to accept that most of our country is arid or semi-arid and filling the vast inland with people would cost us in enormous and unsustainable subsidies.

More recently we have the ‘have one for your old-age’ all to the bedroom. Sure, we are living longer. If we remain healthy that is a wondrous gain. Time on the planet is our scarcest resource.

In Australia we have pushed through the 80-year barrier while there are numerous countries in sub-Sahara Africa where the 40-year barrier is still a forlorn wish.

On the ageing issue, I shall make one observation. If we live longer we can work longer to support ourselves. I’m not talking about slave-like labour in a sweat-shop in the desperately poor countries. With a few exceptions modern-day work is easy and often a pleasure.

And be mindful of the fact that various professionals including farmers tend to continue working until they die.
I admit that as we grow older there can be increased medical costs. However, these tend to be compensated by decreased expenditure on the children, the mortgage, and the costly sports and recreation of the young and middle-aged.

So what is the debate about?  Business people have a case for supporting increased population, because the larger the market the lower the average cost of the good or service being sold and this means greater profits and ( assuming the market is competitive) lower prices for the consumer. Hard to ignore!

Cheap computers, television sets and mobile phones exist because there are enormous world markets for them.  Economies of scale.  Now consider the increase in costs of numerous goods and services. What happens when we notice higher costs is that diseconomies of scale have set in.

In other words, we are trying to provide goods and services to more and more people and we run into barriers.
We have most of the world’s arable land under cultivation. Most of the planet’s extremely limited supply of fresh water is already allocated or over-allocated.

We will recall the dramatic reduction in agricultural production in the drought affected parts of Australia. There are limits to growth.

In the recent drought, in the world’s best fine wool country, in the midlands in Tasmania, farmers attempted to save their sheep  by borrowing money to buy stock food. In the drought their scale of operation was too high. Major diseconomies set in.
We would do as the farmers, but it is a completely different matter to call for more people to simply add to the profits of the rich.

This we call greed. To dress this up as something else (good for the economy, good for the country) is to attempt to hide the truth. Beware of anyone wanting to sell you on the idea of population growth.

At the turn of the 18th century, the Reverend Thomas Malthus stated that the human population would outstrip our ability to feed ourselves.

He said there would be periods of starvation, bloody conflict over food supplies and population ‘culls’. The mechanisation of farm machinery, the use of steam, then in the 20th century oil and the opening-up of the plains in America made Malthus look foolish.

Keep in mind that after Malthus wrote his thesis, Carlyle coined the phrase ‘the dismal science’  to describe economics. It has stuck to the present even though most economists are technological utopian dreamers when it comes to limits to growth.
Come the 20th century and the human population grew dramatically but had it not been for the ‘green revolution’  developed by Norman Borlaug our population would have stalled at about half its present number.

Because it did not, Malthus continued to be wrong. The human population is rapidly approaching 9 billion, another 2 billion in the next 40 years. Many will rightly claim a place at the middle class table we enjoy.  Malthus is about to be proved right.  Where do we find another two or three planet Earths?

Economics drives population numbers not the other way round. This our politicians don’t understand. Furthermore, they don’t comprehend that once people reach a certain level of wellbeing they do not have more children.

The proof is to be found in Catholic Italy as well as Protestant Holland. Readers can explore the history of ideas, inventions, ethics and population growth as they relate to the sustainability of the environment and human society, in my recent book  From Buddha to Bono: Seeking Sustainability.

I conclude with a number. I have done a brief analysis of the economic cost of one aspect of the present level of population in the southeast of Queensland. I refer to the cost of congestion. Each and every one of us who is on our roads during peak hours causes a loss of valuable time for other motorists.

Some of us actually feel the lost time in our hip-pocket and can do something about recouping it.  Many of us (salary and wage earners) have to accept it as simply less time with family and friends.

Tradies, doctors, delivery drivers, taxi drivers and anyone else who can charge by the hour builds into the cost of a job the time lost on our over-crowded roads.

This may or may not show up on the hourly charge rate ( it can be incorporated into the bill in other ways and you do not see it) , but since crowding became very serious 10 to 15 years ago there has been an added cost.

Each time we call out a ‘sparky’ or plumber, each delivery we get, each visit to the dentist we make is costing us. My figures are in real dollars (inflation has been taken out) and they are averaged across a range of professions.

In a nutshell, you can add between 15 per cent and 20 per cent to your bill simply because there are too many people in vehicles clogging up our roads. That’s a big tax.

Tor Hundloe is Emeritus Professor of Environmental Management at the University of Queensland; Research Professor in the Environment School, Griffith University; and Foundation Professor in Environmental Science, Bond University. His most recent book is The Planet of the Thinking Animal: Surviving the 21st Century.

Paul Summers relaxes at his 8-acre hideaway near Cooroy. Image: Brian Rickards

Paul Summers is a jolly sort of bloke – laidback, big smile, dressed for a barbie but with a brain as sharp as a tack.

Immediately, you’d hazard a guess that Paul isn’t your normal stereotypical urban planner hunched over a drawing board on level 33 of a shiny office block in the heart of Brisbane. Yet a planner he is, and with an impressive CV.

And you might hazard a guess that this warm character is just the bloke you’d have confidence in to bring a special kind of creativity and a comfortable lifestyle to any project put his way. You would be right.

Paul, who works from home just a few Ks outside of Cooroy, was one of the luminaries that in the mid-90s brought together the cutting edge Noosa town plan – one that set development limits and by default a population limit. It was a plan that essentially preserved the unique character of Noosa.

Before we got down to a serious chat, Paul just had to show me the lush 8-acre property he is restoring to environmental soundness. He’s also got plans to renovate the old house, something he likes to do to keep hands-on and to occasionally swap his computer and draughting tools for a hammer and saw.

With chooks at feet, he surveys his dam and tells how he is gradually helping the place to recover from a previous owner’s inappropriate maintenance practice.

So, from this idyllic smallholding, Paul starts our formal interview looking at the big picture of the population issue.

“The big problem for all of Australia is our love affair with the seaboard and how we are driven to these edges, such as Noosa which is really close to us. Overpopulating these areas will irrevocably alter the character of the locations,” said Paul.

“Many of the locations are part of our major tourism drawcard and a lot of the work I did in Noosa was designed to try to maintain a tourism outcome because that was our dominant employment area.

“To maintain the area’s character and our niche in the market we had to control the level of development which in turn controlled the level of population. There are very few places doing that in Australia.

“So, the result is, because of the baby boom, the attraction of the seaboard areas and the climate, everybody wants to move to these locations. However, there’s another driving factor – it’s jobs and the fact that most of our economy is directed to those areas.”

Paul then lamented that we don’t do anything to balance our population and attract more people to rural areas.

He says that many of these areas, which are quite attractive and would be nice places to live, could be transformed with new business opportunities.

“Our problem is that we’ve got this major growth mostly in our cities where we inject huge amounts of capital into providing for infrastructure such as roads, freeways and tunnels just to get people from one side of town to the other,” said Paul.

“It’s just a commuter arrangement – instead of living closer to the places they work at, they live on the opposite side, or closer to the sea and burn fossil fuel going backwards and forwards across the city.

“So we spend a lot of money on that sort of infrastructure. Meanwhile in our rural areas we have declining population because there are no jobs and no opportunities.

“We could change the policy position and start creating opportunities for growth in those areas.”

Paul then remembers how his team was ridiculed for their bold new ideas for Noosa.

“I’d walk into a room full of planners and politicians and talk to them about our work on population, and they would laugh at us as if we were crazy,” he said.

“We talked to them about why it was necessary to gear your population to your capacity to supply infrastructure, to your capacity to pay for that infrastructure.”

He believes proper planning looks at the resources available – financial resources and physical resources that allow you to deliver the infrastructure. You also should look at what your community wants to achieve.

Paul is not too impressed with most of our politicians. “They seem to be somewhat loath to describe or bring to the community what their decision-making really means,” he said.

“For instance, the Federal Government talks about a population of 35 million but you don’t see anything about how that population is going to be accommodated across Australia, what that means to the cities across Australia or how that might impact on or change those areas.”

This urban planner, sitting quietly in his cottage far from inner-city pollution, while a good number of fellow Queenslanders are probably sitting in a traffic jam somewhere,  doesn’t have much time for the way we are dealing with city living.

“We don’t have a sensible approach to doing things — we keep growing our cities and just treat the symptoms of the problems. Meanwhile, in the rural areas we try to prop up economies by investing small amounts of money in small ventures,” he said.

“What really makes places attractive to live in for families, apart from the usual physical features, is the opportunity for jobs.”

Paul points to the Western Corridor, between Brisbane and Ipswich, as a success story in steering people away from coastal areas and as a guide for increasing the growth potential in corridor areas and regional locations. He had been a strong advocate of that process in the time of the Goss Government despite people saying it would   never work.

“Less than 20 years later it’s now the primary policy position of the SEQ Regional Plan and the Western Corridor is probably the largest in Australia. And it has all worked because of jobs created through government decision-making at that time which had earmarked land for industrial and commercial development as well as putting in infrastructure in advance,” said Paul.

Paul is not a believer in the idea of official population caps, preferring instead to set limits through controlled and locked-in development.

“It’s impossible to put in place. A cap implies you put in place something that can’t be changed – that’s not possible because community values can change.”

When it comes to planning, Paul says you never have a blank canvas. There is always something that was there previously.
He said planners first have to look at the resources, the values that are in place and the capacity to supply infrastructure and to talk to the community about what they want to achieve. Then they should analyse obligations to the environment, obligations to the community – it’s a marriage of those things.

Paul tells of the dramatic changes in the processes of forming a regional plan. He’s not happy about them and shows how the grassroots checks and balances have been effectively reduced to nothing. It’s a worrying scenario.

“We used to have a cooperative model driven from the bottom up. All the local governments got together coordinated by the state or state agencies and pooled resources and this gave them the opportunity to consider cross-boundary issues,” said Paul.

“The process was fed from the bottom and done largely by professional local government planners at regional level.
“What we have today is the state doing all that work. It takes all of the data that came to local government previously, so it becomes armed with a lot of information.

“So, these days, the state dictates and controls that process. I don’t know what happens internally within the state or how much political interference occurs through that process. I have to say that I believe some occurs.

“So what was a good idea and working quite well was stopped. Now we have a Department of Infrastructure and Planning that dictates what is going to happen and uses a flat-line, straight-curve population projection that has no regard to the capacity of the region to support that population.

“What we’re doing now is changing the regional plan every time a new set of population projections come out. The population projections drive everything. You have a curve that goes out – you add another five years to it and then you’ve got extra fertility and a lower rate of mortality and a massive immigration intake so the curve can keep going up.

“The question for Australia is not about a cap but about how we should be spacially distributing our population. The other is about size and sustainability. To date neither question has been answered.”

“And the level of consultation with the state is now ‘Here’s our plan, what do you think of it?’”

And if you don’t like it?

Paul’s sunny countenance clouds over a little.

“Even the community has a feeling of powerlessness at the present time. So many decisions are being made regardless of their opinion.”

But there’s always an election, Paul is reminded – that’s when his face lights up again.

Simon Baltais busy doing some field work

There has been a series of important stepping stones that have led Simon Baltais to his position as one of Queensland’s leading and most passionate environmentalists.

His early life was spent with his brothers and a sister in the Adelaide Hills, which back in the 60s was ‘very much in the sticks’, according to Simon.

“I was lucky to grow up in a unique environment in South Australia, with lots of trees,” he said..

“I spent a great deal of my time wandering through the scrub just outside Hahndorf.”

The stepfather and mother of his father, a refugee from World War II, had set up the property which had an orchard. The house backed on to creeks and the property had open paddocks and forest.

His mother’s father, a bushie, also captivated Simon. He told his grandsons of his life in the bush; stories about camping and trapping. But most significantly it was a book grandfather treasured that spurred the young Simon to think more about the environment and eventually to have a love of rainforests and a deep care for Australia’s diverse species.

That book was Green Mountains written by Bernard O’Reilly, the farmer and bushie who famously found and brought out survivors of the Stinson airliner crash back in 1937 in what is now the Gold Coast hinterland.

“I used to flick through that book, fascinated by the description of the rainforest, because we had nothing like that in South Australia,” said Simon.

He also said his interest in the environment, which came from being part of a family that valued social justice, was reinforced by his primary school teacher ‘who was very much a greenie’.

“He used to take the whole school – only 60 kids all up – each year to places around South Australia such as Cooper Creek. He was even talking about climate change back then,” said Simon.

“He also used to take us bushwalking once a week. I was lucky, we had scrub next to the school and used to talk about the animals and plants we used to see.

“Our teacher was environmentally focused and so was my grandfather who also liked going out into the open space.  I guess I lived in the perfect environment. I could walk out of my back door and there would be a host of bushland birds and animals.”
When Simon left senior school he joined the army and, rather than picking a trade such as surveying, he decided to go into the infantry. After a year of intensive training he got his first posting, to Townsville.  Most of the training in north Queensland was in jungle warfare and the keen-eyed Simon found his skill as a sniper with the 1st Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment. It was in the ranges behind Ingham, Tully and Cairns that he was drawn even closer to the rainforest he loves so much.

“I loved the rainforest. It was great coming across cassowaries and the like. I wouldn’t say I was a raving greenie, but I did have a passion for the environment,” he said.

“But you can only live in the mud for so long, so I looked to advance my career and joined the Queensland Police Force where I stayed for six years.”

That time covered much of the term of the Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen government in Queensland through to the Fitzgerald Inquiry. While Simon spent much time in Brisbane he did get posted back up to Innisfail where he was reunited with the spectacular northern rainforests.

“It was fantastic. My first job was to chase horses back to East Innisfail while driving a police car; my second job was chasing cassowaries out of people’s backyards,” he laughed.

But it wasn’t all fun. It was where he first came upon green activists and he had to arrest or serve summonses on some of them. He soon realised it was all very political.

“They were all quite peaceful; it was a nice community and I almost felt ashamed at what I was duty-bound to do. They were only trying to do the right thing and save the rainforest – which I totally agreed with,” said Simon.

So was that a moment of epiphany?

“It was I guess. I certainly started questioning some of the things we were doing. I wasn’t terribly happy with some of the things I saw. Policing then was like this – if you were a good copper you got more paperwork and got bogged down; if you just took it as a bit of a joke then you’d probably have a wonderful time not doing much at all.

“You either did the job or gave it away – which I did. After six years I had had enough, so I put myself through external university studies, initially in business then into computers.”

It wasn’t long before seniors officers in the police computer branch noticed Simon’s interest and brought him back to Brisbane to work in their computer centre. It was there that he discovered that public servants were looking after the computers – and in those days it was for security and to make sure the public servants were doing the right thing that they brought in police officers.

“Part of our job was to put up tapes, and process emails and files during the Fitzgerald Inquiry,” he said.

A lot of valuable information was stripped off the tapes by the Crime and Misconduct Commission (CMC), revealing communication between some people in authority ‘doing their own thing’.

“Many police at that stage didn’t really understand what computing was all about and didn’t have any computer skills – they didn’t understand that emails were kept forever,” said Simon.

Simon was soon able to broaden his skills. Some government computer specialists working at the same centre encouraged him to apply for a job in their section. This he did successfully and it was at a time when he and his family moved house to the Redlands.

It was this move that finally led him to his true passion.

Firstly, the new home sat next to a creek with a koala habit alongside. Secondly, after reading about a forthcoming talk on squirrel gliders, he found that only a couple of blocks away was the meeting place for the Wildlife Preservation Society Bayside branch.

“So I wandered off for the night to have a listen and found these amazing people,” said Simon.

“I soon thought, Gee – these guys are doing an incredible amount of work.”

And guess who was sucked in? So Simon took his first steps into the environment movement.

“They were asking for help. I said I lived locally and I knew bureaucracy quite well and perhaps I could help out with submissions. That was the start of it – it was a very steep learning curve,” he said.

Simon’s expertise in moving easily through the bureaucratic maze of political processes has been invaluable and he is now Queensland’s state president of the Wildlife Preservation Society as well as secretary of Queensland Conservation.

And like the well-trained sniper that he used to be, he still has several targets in the metaphorical cross-hairs, but this time to help save life rather than kill and to make sure the environment we live in is sustainable.

When it comes to the planning battlefield, Simon is certainly the man who knows how to fire the telling shot.

And that’s why has the population issue right in his sights.

Tim Flannery

ECO: As far back as 1995 you were advocating a population policy by 2005 with an ultimate target looking out two centuries. Nothing has been done – in fact we seem to be heading to unsustainability at a much faster pace. What do you say to that?

TIM: I think that’s pretty much correct. Well, we need a population policy in this country rather than a series of programs that simply boost that population. We’ve got a number of pro-natalist programs and immigration programs, but we don’t have an over-arching population policy based on our environmental assessments, social assessments, and an economic assessment as to what the true population needs of our country are over the medium to long term. And that’s what we need.

ECO: How do you feel that even after all this time that the only decision as far as population policy is concerned is to not have a real decision at all and to let Australia head for limitless growth?
TIM: We have to win these battles but it takes a long time to do that. It took us a long time to get an environment minister in this country. Unfortunately, until enough people want this and understand the problem it doesn’t become a political priority. And, of course, one of the difficulties is we’re seeking to take something away from politicians effectively. At the moment they are at least arguably responsible for setting the programs and their parameters. It is all hard at the moment, but we have to keep pushing.

ECO: What size of population is sustainable in Australia and what should we do now that we may already be past that point?
TIM: We don’t know the sustainable population of Australia – and that’s one of the great tragedies. The government has never asked for a commission or commissioned a group to try to do that. That would be the first job of an independent body that would help set population targets into the future. But we just don’t know at the moment what the optimum population for this country is and therefore what sort of population size we should be aiming for by 2030 0r 2050.

ECO: Why can’t our leading decision-makers get their heads around this issue?
TIM: It’s a failing of all governments, not just this one. No government has done it before. Part of the problem is that government likes to have more taxpayers – they like growth just like businesses like to have more customers. They like growth as well.  But the populace as a whole doesn’t necessarily want high rates of growth. We have to deepen our democracy to the point where this becomes a real imperative politically.

ECO: Where should we be by 2020 let alone 2050 because of the world’s deteriorating food supply problem and with Australia having to feed more of its own? How will that change our dealings with the rest of the world?
TIM: A good question – for the agriculture minister. I haven’t seen the latest figures on our food security situation but my guess is that we are using more food domestically and exporting less than we were 30 years ago. I’d like to see the figures on that. That’s one of the factors that have to feed into a population policy.

ECO: How will the Catch 22 dilemma ultimately be resolved — the dilemma being how to sustain the Australian lifestyle that some tell us needs a growing economy which in turn needs a growing population where more people use up more of our finite resources in a shorter space of time and quickly destroy the lifestyle  we love so much?
TIM: I don’t believe a vibrant economy needs a growing population. There are plenty of countries in the world with stable or even declining populations that have a good economic status. It’s a matter of decoupling those two things to some extent. I think that’s entirely possible and, of course, every country in the world is going to have to do that in the medium term. It looks as if the world population will peak around 2050. So I think we can do that.

ECO: The social culture of many immigrants is to have large families. How do we deal with that issue?
TIM: What you have to do is have a national population policy with some rough targets. They are only guidelines, of course. Government can’t dictate family size to people but what we want to do is just have an overall policy setting which at least nudges the population towards where we think we might want to be.

ECO: On the issue of carrying capacity how do we reach that figure and how do we manage the country once we go past it? Does it mean we would then have to sacrifice our present level of living, which would be political dynamite?
TIM: No one knows what the optimum population for Australia is at this moment. We don’t have those figures. That’s the first job of any government or anyone who is concerned with this; to try to set up some kind of medium- to long-term target. Of course, population only changes very, very slowly. So you really need to deal with 20 year and 40 year time frames and so forth.

ECO: How can we win the argument and get politicians to see commonsense and no longer be blinded by vested business interests and perhaps their selfishness?
TIM: Again, we have to deepen our democracy to the point where people actually do get a say in it. One political party needs to put up a strong proposal about some sort of Reserve Bank board- type structure that would help set those medium to long term targets. That’s the only way we’ll get change in this area.

ECO: Is stabilisation of population an option? How do you get to that steady state situation?
TIM: The United Nations projections for world population are that it will stabilise around 2050 at around 9 billion. Many countries have already stabilised their populations. Of course it’s an option. How you get there is through good government policy, if that’s what you want to achieve.

ECO: What are your views on the increasing number of debates and forums about the population/growth issue?
TIM: They’re useful. Where there is a rational debate about this and you have a good cross-section of views – yes, then I think it is worth discussing the issue.

ECO: What is your greatest fear and your greatest hope now on the population issue?
TIM: My greatest fear is that things continue as they are. My greatest hope is that we end up with a rational population policy and an independent body that sets the medium to long-term population figures for the country.

Lois Levy

Veteran environmental campaigner Lois Levy views the upcoming population forums as an opportunity to highlight the unwanted social impacts of population growth and expose the thinking behind it.

Ms Levy, secretary of Gold Coast environmental group Gecko, will be a speaker at  one of the forums where she will also argue that government promotion of population growth in southeast Queensland fails to give adequate consideration to the consequences of climate change.

“What I will be trying to convey in my address is that the population growth forecasts handed down by government to guide the new South East Queensland Regional Plan are based on nothing more than the desire of developers to continue to build homes, shopping centres and workspaces,” she said.

“Most of the southeast Queensland growth is occurring in coastal communities such as the Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast despite the fact climate change is likely to cause water levels to rise which could require the relocation of hundreds of thousands of people.”

Ms Levy said the southeast Queensland community has never been asked whether it wants growth so, effectively, its voice has been muzzled.

“The forum provides an opportunity to increase public awareness of the many negative consequences of growth and the need for the community to lobby to achieve change to the regional plan,” she said.

“People are unhappy about coping with congested roads, poor infrastructure and reduced open space and, by working together, can bring this message home to the government.”

Ms Levy, a social worker for 40 years and for 13 years a TAFE teacher who now teaches community development part time, has played significant roles in many high-profile environmental campaigns, including the campaign to prevent development of a cruise terminal on the Southport Spit.

Her involvement with environmental issues began in 1979-80 when she worked with community group Friends of Currumbin Estuary to prevent national development company Lend Lease undertaking a major residential project on the north bank of Currumbin Creek.

“As a consequence of that first campaign, I became fascinated with the processes linked to conserving open space and the methodologies associated with involving the community,” she said.

“I have been active in the environmental movement ever since.”

Ms Levy said population growth, with the high-density living that accompanies much of it, is presented to the public as a rosy vision, but that there are many downsides such as anti-social behaviour in general, crime and mental illness.

“We have rising levels of mental illness among our young and we could easily conjecture that this is a consequence of the need for both parents to be working, the increased congestion in our cities and towns and the dearth of social and community infrastructure being provided in new suburban developments.

“Also, in relation to the issue of population growth, we need to consider the Australian psyche.

“Australians have been raised to think of homes as places with sizable backyards and of communities as places with lots of open space.

“Higher residential densities in the form of apartments and townhouses clustered around infrastructure such as town centres mean there will be little in the way of open space and no backyards.

“This is in complete conflict with the Australian vision.”

Ms Levy said the sorts of problems that flow from ill-considered and under-resourced growth are evident in the Gold Coast’s burgeoning northern suburbs, such as Coomera.

“The services in these areas are abysmal and youth is jammed into urban sprawl precincts with no facilities.

“Across the whole of the northern Gold Coast there is only one community hall, at Oxenford, and that exists solely because of the efforts of a community activist.

“There must be a limit to this sort of development and the community must find other ways of doing things.

“I believe it is time for governments and the community to start thinking about concepts such as the steady-state economy.”

Steady-state economy has its origin in ecological economics, although its roots are in classical economics such as the ‘stationary state’ concept put forward by John Stuart Mill.

The steady-state concept connotes constant populations, constant stocks of capital and a constant rate of throughput of energy and materials that, within a given technological framework, will yield constant flows of goods and services.

Advocates argue that neither economic growth nor economic recession is sustainable and that, therefore, the steady-state economy is the only sustainable option and the appropriate policy goal if sustainability is to be achieved.

Redland City Councillor Debra Henry

Redland City Councillor Debra Henry is committed to challenging the growth paradigm and plans to make her personal views known at the Brisbane and Sunshine Coast population forums organised by the Queensland Conservation Council, the Sunshine Coast Environment Council and other environmental groups.

Cr Henry considers the latest South East Queensland Regional Plan to be a ‘scary blueprint’ for an unwanted future in which quality of life is sacrificed for little if any benefit.

“The Redland City Council elected in 2008 has focused on preserving lifestyle, and environment and community values while taking steps to control growth through its planning process,” she said.

“However, with the latest South East Queensland Regional Plan the state government is moving the goal posts. The plan significantly raises the intensity of development, increasing pressures on everything from lifestyle, open space and wildlife to road, rail, education and healthcare infrastructure.”

Cr Henry has been active in pursuing community-focused social and environmental outcomes since the late 1980s when she became involved with green groups after being motivated by a statement from the UN’s Commission on Environment and Development.

In 1996, she prepared a 15,000-word submission on the Redland council’s strategic plan which, she says, was completely ignored.

Not liking the direction of the then Redland council, Cr Henry had stood for election on a green platform in 2000. Although unsuccessful in this attempt, Cr Henry was encouraged to stand again and, her views having won the support of residents, she was elected in 2004 and re-elected in 2008.

Cr Henry said that, while there was a role for higher density housing, increasingly the community was coming to the view that many southeast Queensland areas were already approaching the maximum population for retention of a wholesome lifestyle.

“We must acknowledge that there are limits to growth and it appears that we are fast approaching, and may have already surpassed, those limits if traditional community values, lifestyles and the ecosystems are to be preserved,” she said.

“The inevitability of growth is a myth. Growth targets are merely predictions based on current trends of immigration plus births minus deaths. Immigration programs are entirely within the control of government and can be reduced until such time as Australia’s carrying capacity has been determined.

“Similarly, the Federal Government can abandon its policy of paying people to have children.

“Changes to these two policies would go a long way to stabilising Australia’s population.”

Cr Henry is also unhappy about the government attitude to Australia’s ageing population.

“It infuriates me the way the government goes on about the rising number of over-65s, viewing them as a burden and advocating the importation of people as a way to meet the additional costs which, it claims, are associated with longevity,” she said..

“I believe we are in a transition period and the ‘bulge’ of older residents should be viewed as temporary.

“Even were the claimed additional costs real and unable to be met by other means, our politicians have had the resources and should have faced the consequences of an expanding ageing population long ago.

“Now, suddenly, it is being touted as a huge problem. It  certainly needs to be carefully considered but so too should the significant costs associated with providing for the needs of a younger generation.”

Cr Henry says that, while many believe growth is good for the economy, this view has not been proven.

“I advocate alternative positions and challenge the status quo because things just don’t add up,” she said.

“Take the issue of population capping. Whenever capping is discussed the response is: We want our children to live here and capping will drive up home prices.

“Nevertheless, despite the fact there has been no population capping and no restriction by government on the rezoning of land for residential purposes, home prices have escalated alarmingly. And, somehow, the position that capping will drive up prices is held alongside the popular view that house price escalation is good without any realisation that the two positions are incompatible.

“Land-banking by developers is a factor contributing to housing affordability and there needs to be strong advocacy for the impacts of land-banking on the housing market to be scrutinised.”

Cr Henry said those who question the status quo need to network better to make sure the broader community is given adequate and comprehensive information on which to make important decisions.

“It is not difficult to recognise that constant expansion in a finite world is an impossibility,” she said.

“It doesn’t matter how small the area in which a person can live, the ecological footprint spreads much farther than their own backyard or balcony. When people understand this, and when other myths are dispelled, we’ll be on our way to sustainability.”

Cr Henry said councils were doing what they could to prompt the State Government to face the population issue and to convince the community that the government’s long-held commitment to growth at any cost was unsustainable.

“In recent years, at the insistence of the State Government, councils were required to develop Local Growth Management Strategies (LGMS) to demonstrate how they would meet growth ‘targets’,” she said.

“In 2008, the newly- elected Redland City Council submitted its LGMS with a proviso.

“We accepted the government’s ‘targets’ only after further detailed studies to ascertain whether or not such growth was within the Redlands’ carrying  capacity – the maximum population able to be accommodated indefinitely without suffering any loss of amenity, including natural environment.

“Last year, Redland City councillors voted to place a motion before the Local Government Association of Queensland’s annual conference seeking to ensure that the projected growth and population distribution be in keeping with the social and natural environment. The motion was unanimously adopted.”

Cr Henry said she believed the political system itself was responsible for many of the problems we faced and that ‘things needed to be done differently’.

“The donation system allows significant influence to be brought to bear on government decision-making by a small group of powerful people, often leading to outcomes that are not in the best interests of the wider community,” she said.

The planned Mooloolah River interchange

It’s then that you realise that projected population growth is sending people loopy, including road planners.

It’s enough to send any sane driver into a spin. On paper, it’s like curled strings of spaghetti have been spilled on the map, the spaghetti signifying multi-lanes of concrete and bitumen which will cover a huge area and mean the demolition of many family homes.

And once it’s built you’ll never see granny again as she drives off into its motoring maze to who knows where.

So this is the Sunshine Coast’s future where the big spending is presently focused on bigger and more complex road systems rather than public transport – all to accommodate more and more people beyond its comfortable capacity.
So when you get onto these roads in 2030 or even earlier, where do you go – just down the freeway to get lost in the complexities of the next challenging interchange and funnel off into the next delightful bit of urban infill.

But back to Cr Griffin. At the face of it a serious woman, but one suspects her of having a wry sense of humour.

“Imagine the billions of dollars that would go into that – it’s a multi-modal transport corridor,” said the councillor as she waved the copy of the planned motorway upgrade.

“This is where the Department of Transport and Main Roads spends the money, drawing this stuff up – they don’t spend their money on getting the public transport improved.”

Cr Griffin holds an important portfolio on the new Sunshine Coast Regional Council.

The portfolio is ‘Integrated Transport’ – one Cr Griffins describes as having two elements; it is ‘integrated with land use but also it means that each mode is integrated with the other’.

“I asked the mayor for this portfolio immediately after the council was elected because I think that if we do not have a sustainable transport outcome, then we will never achieve a sustainable Sunshine Coast,” she said.

“There are other important elements to long-term sustainability but this is a core one.”

At the same time as showing the aerial map/overlay artwork composite of the multi-looped Mooloolah River Interchange, Cr Griffin also showed a page of the Sunshine Motorway 32 Study’ put together by global transport consultants Connell Wagner.

“Their brief was to come up with a motorway that could deal with the doubling of the Sunshine Cost population by 2032. These figures had been supplied by the Planning Information and Forecasting Unit (PIFU). Transport modelling done as part of the study predicted traffic volumes would increase in some areas to more than three times the level.

Connell Wagner reported back that ‘to cater for projected 2032 traffic volumes, the motorway would need to be planned for 10 lanes’ [in one of its sections].

They added a rider: ‘A 10-lane motorway is not practical. As more lanes are added, the spacing between interchanges needs to increase and it would not be possible to accommodate many of the proposed and existing interchange locations’.

“The engineers are saying ‘we actually can’t build it’,” said Cr Griffin.

“It would be a hideous choice, anyway.”

“Then what they say is ‘what we need to do, because we can’t do that, is shift to more effective public transport, increased vehicle occupancy, and land-use planning’,” said Cr Griffin.

“Do I see any evidence that they’re tackling these issues? The answer is ‘No’.”

So, it would seem that the engineers can not deliver a road system on this part of the Sunshine Coast to adequately cope with the State Government’s projected population figure which is in the ballpark of the South East Queensland Regional Plan.
But perhaps the prospect of ‘Peak Oil’ and the attendant escalation of fuel prices will drive drivers off the roads and on to public transport and save the day. We just need more money redirected towards installing those public transport systems.
Meanwhile, the SM2032 Study team, instead, has decided to provide a detailed planning strategy for a four to eight lane motorway that will cater for traffic demands to at least 2021 and provide strategic direction for motorway development through to 2032.

Fortunately, the consultants have also been looking at other transport solutions which include more effective public transport, increased vehicle occupancy and land-use planning to reduce road-based travel demand (transit systems).

This is where Cr Griffin has a particular interest. She believes that with the prospect of Peak Oil there will be rapid advances in public transport systems.

However, other advances of technology in ‘green mobility’, which include hybrid-fuels or hybrid vehicles, will still mean cars on the roads creating congestion.

“If you still have private motor vehicles, no matter how eco-efficient they are, there’s still a need to build more roads, and that’s not long-term sustainable,” said Cr Griffin.

“It will lead to loss of habitat and spending massive amounts of money on capital infrastructure, creating gridlocks, incurring more maintenance costs.

“While it’s important to look at those fuel options it is still important to look at public transport as a key element in the equation.

“Ultimately, people understand that their choices have prices. However, we must focus on delivering a great alternative to the private motor vehicle – to deliver a quality, fast, frequent, reliable, good-looking public transport service.

“We’re incredibly focused on working up the public transport options now. We have to make sure we are not approving residential or economic development without clearly having a delivery of public transport. It has to be a major player in our planning.

“With the council amalgamations we now have a much larger area to cover and have an opportunity at a regional scale to deliver good transport outcomes. We will be neglectful to our community if we don’t seize that opportunity.

“A key element is that we build into our land use planning, from the beginning, certain parameters to encourage public transport use such as designing in a ‘green link’ connector to major employment centres.”

But Cr Griffin did point out that one of the issues they had with State Government  was getting agreement to deliver infrastructure at the right time and sequence, when the residential development, or indeed something like the Kawana University Hospital comes on line.

She said there was the danger of creating a residential ghetto if you get to a situation where you say ‘Ooops! Now we need to deliver the public transport’.

Taking her ‘transport’ cap off, Cr Griffin said: “As a council we are saying you can have a healthy economy without relying on infinite population growth, and there are plenty of documents around to support that.

“Our economic advantage here is as a lifestyle region. We think we have a competitive economic advantage through rural food production as well.

“I also have no doubt that regions do not have an exponential capacity to sustain population growth into the future – that’s a nonsensical proposition. Physically you would have to be delivering a Shanghai-type future with lots of 80-storey residential towers.

“You have to be honest. You have to be wise in acknowledging that there is this thing called ‘sustainable carrying capacity’.”