Stable Population cuckoos invade Australia

George Orwell's great novel 1984 starts with the line, "It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen." Even time had been coopted by the state. Now the green shoots of Orwell's totalitarian future are emerging in Australia.

The Stable Population Party (SPP) is the bastard child of Big Brother's persuasive social engineering methods. It has been succored by the Optimum Population Trust (now called Population Matters UK) and had, through one of its Senate candidates, links to right wing anti-immigration figures such as John Tanton and the Social Contract Press in the US.

The SPP is using environmental and heritage groups - much as cuckoos lay their eggs in the nests of other birds - to hatch their anti-immigration message in the lead up to the September Federal election. The party has no environmental credentials.

The SPP wants to create a one in/one out immigrations system, stop building houses for first home buyers, stop the Kiwis arriving, reduce child support payments and especially parental leave, stop 457 visas and slashing our international student numbers. It aims fulfill its 'no growth' mantra by winding back capitalism to a level Pol Pot would have enjoyed.

Lets turn the clock back to 2006 and see how the population issue first arose. Back then the ABS introduced a new methodology that captured for the first time, most of our international student numbers. The 383,818 international full fee-paying students were rolled in to the resident numbers even though they were on temporary visas.

Our international student market was growing strongly in 2005/2006, so the forward base population projections added in the mid range (series B) another seven million people - from 28 million to 35 million by 2050. The 'shock horror' panic reaction got solid media coverage, even though it was just a projection and included temporary residents. A projection is not a fact but it was enough to fertilise the sociobiological spores of the SPP.

The Spectator had an amusing piece last year on the global anti-population push, which I have included here. http://www.spectator.co.uk/features/123471/malthuss-children/

It is also worth citing Stephen Emmott's article in The Guardian as balance as it is a prime example of the 'retroactive correction' which I will discuss later.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/jun/30/population-growth-wipe-out-life-earth

Let us examine a small but important point, which of oft quoted by the SPP and which underpins much of its 'economic theory' (such as it is).

SPP tangled up in infrastructure

A couple of years ago, Dr Jane O'Sullivan, a Queensland SPP Senate Candidate, wrote in in her submission to the 'Population Policy Inquiry for Local Government Association' in Queensland and in Opinion Online (The downward spiral of hasty population growth), that Australia's infrastructure spend is currently 25 per cent of GDP. She said this was due to high population growth.