Stable Population Party 'green-washing' racism

The Stable Population Party (SPP) is using environmental and community groups to 'green wash' its anti-immigration message and split the Greens vote at the Federal election.

The SPP's technique of 'green washing' local community groups comes first hand from American organisations such as John Tanton and the Social Contract Press, the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) and especially Numbers USA. The SPP has direct and indirect links with the former and latter organisations.

Green washing is portraying oneself as pro-environment but camouflaging the anti-immigration motives. While the SPP's rhetoric sits to the left of the Greens, its policies would find a home with the British National Party.

The SPP want to create a one in/one out immigration system, stop building houses for first home buyers, stop the Kiwis arriving, reduce child support payments and especially parental leave, stop 457 visas and slash international student numbers. This is unusual, as Australia doesn't have a population problem. Africa does.

The anti-population literature from the 1960s and 70s is hauntingly familiar of the strident and divisive language used by the Australian anti-population umbrella organisation, Sustainable Population Australia (SPA). The SPA's sociobiological ideology turns political problems into biological problems and recasts human history as natural history. My recent New Matilda article gives some background on sociobiology.

The SPA and the SPP have been picking at the scab of immigration for some years. They cloak themselves in the garb of environmentalism (I call them 'Pauline Hanson in a koala suit) but unlike the Greens, they have no environmental credentials. They have links with some unsavory organisations in the States.

Here is Roy Beck from the anti-immigration group Numbers USA sunning himself on the Sunshine Coast before visiting Bindi and Teri Irwin on or about 17 January this year. Numbers USA is a powerful right wing, anti-immigration lobby group in Washington.

About six days later, Bindi was upset because Hilary Clinton's office made substantial edits to her anti-population essay, which she submitted as part of the US Secretary of State's conservation initiative. On 25 January, Bindi posted a Youtube video of her reading her essay. It's a highly crafted and nuanced piece of work, with an exceptional – almost adult - understanding of metaphor.

Meanwhile, Beck has flown down south to meet Stable Population Party boss, William Bourke, where he received an 'open invitation' to visit the Numbers USA Washington office.

Bourke said on the SSP Facebook page, "They (Numbers USA) don't tackle fertility, due to the right wing Christian influence over there but we have some common goals and there are some ways we may be able to work together post-election." Also present at the meeting were SPA committee members, Graham Wood and Nola Stewart. A nice picture of Beck and Bourke is in the SPA February 2013 newsletter.

Just five months later, here is Bindi advocating access to birth control for young girls in poor countries.

''There's such a thing as seven-year-implants, so if you had a girl that was 11 years old and gave her the seven-year implant she wouldn't be able to have kids until she was 18," said Bindi. Where did she get that from? Roy Beck and Numbers USA.

Americans meddling in Australia's domestic affairs in the lead up to an election is of serious concern but more troubling is William Bourke's comment on The Conversation on 29 May, that he had never heard of the Social Contract Press, of John Tanton (a former employer of Becks) or any foreign anti-population/anti-immigration group (italics are mine).

"I have never heard of the USA groups/people you mention, let alone have "links" with them. In fact the ASPP has no links to ANY group anywhere, including in Australia - we are completely independent, at my insistence, from day one," said Bourke.

But he'd only met Beck a few months prior. Why did he deny it? Exactly what is the relationship of the SPP with the anti-immigration movement in America? I appreciated the up-front honesty of Canberra SPP Senate candidate and poet Mark O'Connor,who was an associate of John Tanton's, when he commented on one of my articles on OLO:

"John Tanton is a bit right wing but neither a racist nor eugenicist. He stayed with his wife and daughter in my (left wing) house for several days some years ago and, indeed, I went to Washington in 1991 at his expense to work in the FAIR office… I attended the writing workshops sponsored by the Social Contract in 2010 and 2011 in Washington and while they were a bit right wing for me (anti-Obama and pro-Republican), they nevertheless had a lot to offer."

In 2011, The New York Times profiled Tanton. He wrote to a large donor and said, "One of my prime concerns is about the decline of folks who look like you and me." He warned a friend that, "for European-American society and culture to persist requires a European-American majority, and a clear one at that." One presumes a clear, white Republican majority.

The Washington Post on (February 13, 2013) reported that even Republicans have had enough of these anti-immigration groups. They accuse Numbers USA, the Center for Immigration Studies(CIS), and the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), of masquerading as conservatives while "pressing an unorthodox agenda of strict population control that also has included backing for abortion, sterilization and other policies at odds with conservative ideology."

The anti-population movement has a chequered past. Students of reproductive history know that between 1960-1980 more than 20 million people in developing nations were cajoled or forced into having IUD implants, hysterectomies or vasectomies, at the behest of the Population Control lobby in America.

They convinced foreign governments in India, Ceylon, Africa and Asia with the line, 'we will give you less mouths to feed while making the next generation stronger and smarter.' What Third World leader could resist?

The critical flaw was a lack of post-procedural care. Infection was rife. Women post partum were vulnerable and easy targets for those pushing sterilization. But the real problem – and one shared by their contemporary Australian colleagues – was the objectification of the people they were trying to help. They were seen as statistics rather than living, feeling human beings.

By the late 1970s the evangelical fervor of the Third World anti-population push of the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Trust and Robert McNamara (remember Vietnam?), had failed to make a dent in population growth. For all of their scientific studies, propaganda, research and the millions of dollars spent, population control simply didn't work.

Why? Contraception was only one factor in a web of variables in the life of a woman living in the developing world. It was important but not as important as earning money, providing her children with clean drinking water and healthy food and giving them a good education. Population control was far more complex than implanting IUDs, injecting people with Depo Provera or offering them cash to be sterilized. It required a holistic approach, which is what we see in Africa today.

The UN learned that to reduce population, they had assist in nation building projects, especially in Africa, and not totally focus on women. There are numerous NGOs working at the local level across a raft of programs. But there are no quick fixes.

At the Federal election the SPP - which claims to be an environmental party - has preferenced One Nation, the Australian Motoring Party, the Shooters and Fishers Party, Palmer's United Party, Family First and Katter's Australian Party ahead of the Greens.

If one voted on SPP preference guidelines, you would support kicking out the Asians, raising tariffs, shooting wildlife in national parks, eschewing contraception, building more mines and raising jingoism to a fine art.

The SPA and SPP are the latest incarnation of the global Population Control movement. The anti-populationists invoke the concept of lebensraum. For them nations are bodies and political borders must accommodate biological processes of growth. They are fixated on boundaries, systems and limits to growth rather than potential.

Yet the SPP has done nothing to reduce Australian consumption rates, constrain extractive industries or hold polluters accountable. They're working over time to convince environmentalists and community groups to do their dirty work by blaming immigrants for environmental degradation.

The SPP's relationship with these offshore anti-immigration groups is dodgy. Its use of second hand and online 'fellow-traveller' sources to support its absurd and fantastical arguments, is the stuff of Dada. But they will get votes from the survivalists cradling guns, from the romper stompers and from a few former inner suburban Democrats who lost the plot many years ago.

The SPP's aim is to split the Green Party vote, shaft immigrants and create Fortress Australia. Send them packing.