Population Growth

The Battle of Hastings continues with the State Government giving  $20million of our taxpayers hard earned cash for yet another study by the Port of Hastings Authority, trying to justify building a giant container Port .    Hard to believe really when you read reports of shipping companies falling on hard times with not enough work to keep them in the water.  See Time Magazine January 12,  09   Page 40   ' IN THE DOLDRUMS . Falling trade and lack of credit are driving the world's shipping industry into desperate straits '.

Incidentally as could be expected the timing for this  announcement was impeccable - just before Christmas.

Read below a letter to the editor by Catherine Manning President of the Southern Victoria Community Action Group Inc.  

Do give support with a  letter to the Age and the Herald Sun.  

Mary Drost

Convenor  PLANNING BACKLASH

What a sad day for Melbourne and for Victoria. 
VICTORIA THE GARDEN STATE
                           Rapidly becoming 
                                                      VICTORIA THE CONCRETE STATE.

Victoria the lovely green state that used to be swimming in water.    Gone.   Not even the lake left in Ballarat.   That lake was always a wonderful feature of Ballarat and admired by the droves of tourists  coming there    Gone.

DESPITE the threat of increased water restrictions and pressure on households to reduce their usage, they use only 8 per cent of available water ("Cut your water use", theage.com.au, 24/11). Even if every resident in Victoria cut their in-home water use in half, it would still leave 96 per cent for the real water guzzlers — industry and agriculture.

There seems to be endless water available for building new concrete infrastructure and housing estates for the 1200 new people entering Victoria each week, but we are supposed to watch our gardens and lawns dry out unless we have installed tanks or grey-water systems, at our own expense.

Instead of logging catchments, violating forests and private property for the north-south pipeline and destroying a coastline with a greenhouse-gas emitting desalination plant, why do we not have a population policy? Population growth may be "good for business" but not if leafy suburbs become a luxury and not part of Melbourne's characteristic liveability.

IT IS TIME TO HAVE A SERIOUS DEBATE ON POPULATION BOTH FOR MELBOURNE  VICTORIA AND AUSTRALIA.    WHERE ARE WE GOING?    HOW MANY MORE PEOPLE CAN WE FIT IN WITH THE AMOUNT OF WATER WE HAVE NOW?   DOES THE ECONOMY DEPEND ONLY ON BUILDING MORE HOUSES FOR     STILL MORE PEOPLE?   WE HEAR ABOUT   2030   WHAT ABOUT 2070?  HAVE YOUR SAY.   LET THE POLITICIANS HEAR WHAT YOU THINK.