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The only way forwards is backwards: A budget reply

By Cameron Leckie - posted Tuesday, 17 May 2011


The party's position is that the Australian population is unsustainable over the long term. This implies that Australia needs to reduce its population to sustainable levels, or pay the penalty through a crash in living standards.

To achieve this, the baby bonus scheme will be modified to encourage a reduction in Australia's fertility rate such that parents will receive double the current allowance for the first child, half the current allowance for the second child and nothing for subsequent children. This will also be extended to child-care rebates, where the rebate for the first child of a working parent/family is raised to 75%, for the second child reduced to 25% and nothing for subsequent children.

Immigration levels will also be capped to match emigration. These policies will over time see the Australian population stabilise and then decline to more sustainable levels. A target for Australia's population will be set after a Sustainable Australia Commission review into a sustainable population after consideration of the impacts of climate change, oil and other resource depletion on Australia.

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It is likely that many people who read this budget reply will complain that the introduction of these policies would plunge Australia into recession, possibly even a depression. Indeed, that maybe the case but there is a method in this approach. The various storm clouds that are approaching and interacting with one another in many and varied ways will likely induce severe economic contraction and political upheaval regardless of what we do now.

But it is critical to our long term future, that this contraction does not end in synchronous failure, the simultaneous collapse of political, social and economic order. Avoiding such a scenario is both vital and mammoth.

Roughly put, it entails halving our oil consumption over the next decade, eliminating the greater proportion of the debt currently outstanding and halving our population over the next half century or so. This is why these policies are so important; they will reduce the risk of synchronous failure and provide the opportunity for what Canadian political scientist, Thomas Homer-Dixon, refers to as catagenesis, the opportunity for creativity and renewal after the breakdown.

To position ourselves for catagenesis, we need to transform our society to one that conserves over consumes, saves rather than spends, simplifies rather than complicates and prefers low tech over high tech. Such a society will be well placed to deal with the storm clouds of the future, unlike the Australia of the present.

Neither the Government's budget nor the opposition's response in their current form, will assist in this transformation. It is time for a change of direction. Perhaps going backwards is the only way forwards!

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About the Author

Cameron Leckie has a Bachelor Science and a Graduate Diploma in Education. Employment experience includes a range of management positions both in Australia and overseas in the telecommunications industry. He is a member of the Australian Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas (ASPO Australia). Since finding out about peak oil in 2005, he has written extensively on the topic and in particular, its impact on the aviation industry.

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