{"id":1626,"date":"2014-10-20T11:17:28","date_gmt":"2014-10-20T01:17:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sos.asn.au\/?p=1626"},"modified":"2014-11-06T08:14:56","modified_gmt":"2014-11-05T22:14:56","slug":"the-great-population-debate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sos.asn.au\/vic\/2014\/10\/20\/the-great-population-debate\/","title":{"rendered":"The Great Population Debate – two very different perspectives on our future"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last Monday, on 13 October, at the Deakin Edge,\u00a0the Lord Mayor and ALP Kelvin Thompson presented two very different views of Melbourne and the impact of population growth.<\/em><\/p>\n

Robert Doyle started the debate enthusiastically defending population growth, saying increased population made for a more interesting city and \u2018generates prosperity\u2019. He boasted about how well Melbourne City had grown, how proud he was of the number of coffee shops and rate of CBD development and population growth. He defended multiculturalism, suggesting opponents of population growth must be anti multiculturalism. He said we could have clever growth. He drew parallels with the way we reduced water consumption in the late 2000s. He said Melbournians needed to adapt. He said we could put 2.3m people along existing infrastructure hubs, using only 6% of Melbourne\u2019s land. In any event, he said he didn’t know how it could be stopped. He said \u2018population growth was inevitable \u2026 because this is what\u00a0we are\u2019.<\/p>\n

Kelvin Thomson had\u00a0a very different view of Melbourne, a \u2018high rise boom dominated by high rise buildings \u2013 not only poor design but in the wrong places\u2019 and the CBD as \u2018Cold Big and Dysfunctional\u2019. He spoke about more intrusive government, increased inequality and crime, economic impacts and infrastructure failure with higher population. He referred to impending environmental crises \u2013 \u2018treating the Earth as a state in liquidation \u2026 with many species on a short, fast road to extinction\u2019. He said our kids did not have the opportunities we had and faced an \u2018axis of \u2026 housing shortage, unemployment, education debt and increased depression\u2019. Thomson also had very different ideas of social justice and economic imperatives and referred to success of low growth Scandinavian countries with low currencies, low unemployment, free education and budget surplus. He concluded saying that we faced a \u2018world broken by rapid population growth \u2013 global warming, poverty and terrorism, made by those who own the world [corporate interests, those promoting growth]\u2019.<\/p>\n

After lengthy question time, almost entirely supporting less growth, Mary Drost from Planning Backlash thanked both speakers. She then asked whether they supported a referendum on the population growth policy. Thompson supported\u00a0the referendum, Doyle reluctantly conceded but seemed to suggest there wasn’t much point to a referendum!<\/p>\n

Video of the debate can be found at:\u00a0http:\/\/candobetter.net\/node\/4118<\/a>
\nVideo of questions can be found at: http:\/\/candobetter.net\/node\/4121<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last Monday, on 13 October, at the Deakin Edge,\u00a0the Lord Mayor and ALP Kelvin Thompson presented two very different views of Melbourne and the impact of population growth. Robert Doyle started the debate enthusiastically defending population growth, saying increased population made for a more interesting city and \u2018generates prosperity\u2019. He boasted about how well Melbourne […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":48,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sos.asn.au\/vic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1626","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sos.asn.au\/vic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sos.asn.au\/vic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sos.asn.au\/vic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/48"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sos.asn.au\/vic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1626"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"https:\/\/sos.asn.au\/vic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1626\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1698,"href":"https:\/\/sos.asn.au\/vic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1626\/revisions\/1698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sos.asn.au\/vic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sos.asn.au\/vic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sos.asn.au\/vic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}