He said ”the extreme and radical rate of population growth” meant more high-rise apartment blocks, overcrowded transport networks and loss of parklands were inevitable, and it was time for a national debate about whether this was what people wanted.
Mr Bourke said he and a small group of like-minded people expect to reveal the name and plans for the party within three weeks and where they want to run candidates.
He refused to say who else was involved organising the party or to detail its policies beyond cutting most levels of immigration, apart from the numbers of refugees, to ensure Australia’s population would remain at about 23 million over the long term.
The entrepreneur Dick Smith has backed the plans to form the party as ”a good idea” because it might finally force the government and the opposition to publicly discuss an issue they refused to touch.
”I reckon Kevin Rudd’s realised nine out of 10 people don’t want a big Australia,” he said.
Concern about population projections had increased along with concern about the impact of global warming. ”There was the hypocrisy of the PM going to Copenhagen saying he wants to reduce global warning and double the population. You just can’t do it,” he said .
Last week Mr Smith launched the second edition of Overloading Australia, a book by Mark O’Connor and William Lines, which argues that Australia has the highest rate of population growth of any comparable country and that it should peg its population at present levels.
Joining him at the launch were other like-minded thinkers including the former NSW premier Bob Carr, singer John Williamson and Clean Up Australia founder Ian Kiernan.
He said the fear of being branded racist had scared environmental groups from discussing the issue of population increase despite its huge impact on the natural environment.
Mr Smith said all governments encouraged high levels of growth because that was what big business wanted, especially property developers, who depended on an ever-increasing demand for accommodation to maximise their profits.
Only half the migrants entering Australia with skills on the MODL actually end up employed in their field and one-third end up unemployed or in a low-skill job, Senator Evans said.
It will be replaced by a new Skilled Occupations List of high-value professions and trades drawn up by Skills Australia.
More than 20,000 foreigners who applied to migrate to Australia before September 2007 under outdated rules that allowed lower English skills will have their applications withdrawn and their $1500-$2000 applications fees refunded under the changes.
This is because the system that allocates potential migrants points based on their qualifications and skills will be restructured.
“The current points test puts an overseas student with a short-term vocational qualification gained in Australia ahead of a Harvard-educated environmental scientist,” Senator Evans said. The new system is likely to give potential migrants more points if they are qualified in certain high-value professions and trades, went to a prestigious university, have more experience and display excellence in English.
The Immigration Minister will get the power to set a maximum number of visas that may be granted in any one occupation and the states will be able to prioritise skilled migrants.
Senator Evans said the changes would shift our immigration system from a supply driven model to a demand driven system in which migrants sponsored by an employer would get priority.
While Australia’s hospitals need nurses and doctors there are 12,000 foreign cooks waiting to come to Australia under the existing system, he said.
Under the existing system 40,000 unsponsored visas were issued to accountants over the past five years yet a shortage of accountants persists because most did not get work in the profession.
“Australia’s skilled migration program has been delivering self-nominated migrants from a narrow range of occupations with poor to moderate English language skills who struggle to find employment in their nominated occupation” Senator Evans will tell an Australian National University demography institute today.
About 170,000 people applied to migrate to Australia last year.
There was a need for a debate about population growth and the impact it was likely to have on Australia’s carbon footprint, declining housing affordability, traffic congestion, and “overcrowded concrete jungles”.
“I detect there is a hunger in the electorate for a debate about this issue,” he later told Fairfax Radio Network, adding he had been deluged with emails and letters since first raising the issue.
The opposition agrees, but has stopped short of supporting Mr Thomson’s call for a population cap of 26 million.
Nor will it support the MP’s suggestion for a reduction in the skilled migrant intake to 25,000 a year.
“We’re very happy to have a population policy debate,” opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison said.
“But we have to make sure that when we’re running a migration program we’re ensuring that we’re bringing people into the country who can really make a contribution.”
When asked to nominate an upper limit to Australia’s population, Mr Morrison said: “At the moment I don’t think we know the answer to that question”.
The carrying capacity of the nation’s infrastructure and the ability of the environment to sustain a bigger population was not known, he said.
Mr Thomson also wants overseas students to return to their country of origin for at least two years before they can apply for permanent residency in Australia.
He repeated his call for the abolition of the baby bonus and limits on family tax benefits for a third and subsequent children.
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd says he believes in a "big Australia" and that the population forecast is good news for the country, but he does concede that it poses complex challenges.
"That is why we're taking a leading position on climate change but also the long-term sustainability of the Murray-Darling and the proper provision of water supplies for the future.
"This Government is building for the future - we call it nation-building for the future. But let's be optimistic about the fact this country's growing, so many around the world are heading the other way."
Mr Rudd says the Government is developing long-term plans for health, the environment and infrastructure.
"I actually believe in a big Australia I make no apology for that. I actually think it's good news that our population is growing," he said.
"Contrast that with many countries in Europe when it's actually heading in the other direction. I think it's good for us, it's good for national security in the long-term, it's good in terms of what we can sustain as a nation."
Federal Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull says investment in water infrastructure will determine whether Australia can sustain 35 million people.
"I do welcome a larger population, but so long as we have the infrastructure to enable us all to live here in a sustainable way," he said.
"And the great thing that is missing from Mr Rudd's enthusiasm is any coherent long-term plans for water."
And the Opposition's sustainable development spokesman Bruce Billson says the Government has made big promises but doesn't have a big plan.
"[It is] quite bitsy. They're not connected to a strategic plan for our major cities," he said.
"The Prime Minister might be excited about a big Australia but what I think Australians are concerned about is the Federal Labor Government has no plan for coping with this enlarged population.
"We've seen no coordinated strategic plan about how the population will be settled, no consideration about what extra pressure that will be putting on our environment.
"What concerns me is the lack of plan to accommodate that growing number of people in a sustainable way and in way that we can point to still maintaining and improving a great quality of life, prosperity and standard of living that's the envy of the rest of the world."
When I say vegetable oil, I mean mostly palm and soya oil. The developer of the Newport plant, Vogen Energy, has admitted that these oils will form at least part of the mix. So has W4BRE Limited, the company hoping to receive planning permission for a similar plant at Portland in Dorset in the next few weeks. This isn’t surprising, as they are the cheapest sources of vegetable oil.
They are also the most destructive. The world’s soya frontier is the Brazilian Amazon, where great tracts of rainforest are being trashed to produce oil and meal for western markets. Palm oil plantations now threaten to destroy almost all the remaining rainforest in Malaysia and Indonesia – even reserves such as the famous Tanjung Puting national park in Kalimantan, which is currently being wrecked by planters. Oil palm threatens the extinction of the orang-utan, Sumatran rhino and at least one sub-species of tiger. It is driving tens of thousands of indigenous people from their homes. But, maddest of all, it produces far greater greenhouse gas emissions than fossil fuels.
A report for Wetlands International shows that every tonne of palm oil results in up to 33 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions, or 10 times as much as petroleum produces.
A paper published in Science suggests that when tropical forest growing on peaty soils is cleared to plant palm oil, it would take around 840 years for any carbon savings from burning this oil to catch up with the emissions caused by planting it.
After these plants were challenged by the small but very effective campaign group Biofuelwatch, the two companies started backtracking, suggesting that they might use other oils, not just palm oil and soya oil. But if they receive planning permission, there would be no means of enforcing this – no means, in other words, of preventing them from using the cheapest feedstocks to supply their power stations. And even if, out of the goodness of their hearts, they decided not to use either of these sources, it’s doubtful that this would make any difference. As Carl Bek-Nielsen, vice-chairman of Malaysia’s United Plantations Bhd, remarked: “Even if it is another oil that goes into biodiesel, that other oil then needs to be replaced. Either way, there’s going to be a vacuum and palm oil can fill that vacuum.”
The fact is that all these plants would be burning food to produce power. Even if the Newport scheme were to use rapeseed oil (which still produces more greenhouse gases than fossil fuel, though it’s not nearly as bad as palm or soya), Biofuelwatch calculates that the land required to grow it could otherwise have fed 35,000 people. As the government’s environment department, Defra, now says that food security is one of the major issues the UK faces, this is madness squared. Last year the World Bank calculated that biofuels were responsible for 75% of the inflation in the price of food.
But already the UK’s first vegetable oil power station – Blue NG’s plant in Beckton, east London – has been approved. Blue-NG doesn’t use palm or soya oil, it says it uses UK sourced rapeseed oil. Thanks to a powerful campaign by local people and the group Food Not Fuel, Blue NG’s attempt to build a similar one in Southall, west London, was thrown out last week by the council, though the Greater London Authority could reverse that. There are several more in the pipeline.
So why is it happening? For one reason: the government awards double renewable obligation certificates for power stations burning vegetable oil. In other words, you harvest twice as much taxpayers’ money this way as you would for generating the same amount of electricity with a wind turbine. None of it would be happening if it weren’t for this perverse incentive, which the government justifies by defining sustainability so narrowly that it excludes the greenhouse gases caused by clearing land to grow the oil. Ed Miliband’s department is responsible for this. Over the next few weeks I hope to discover how the hell he justifies it.
• This article was amended on 14 September 2009 to make clear that Blue-NG does not use palm or soya oil and says it uses UK sourced rapeseed oil. Becton, was changed to Beckton.
The Guardian understands that key differences have emerged between the US and Europe over the structure of a new worldwide treaty on global warming. Sources on the European side say the US approach could undermine the new treaty and weaken the world’s ability to cut carbon emissions.
The treaty will be negotiated in December at a UN meeting in Copenhagen and is widely billed as the last chance to save the planet from a temperature rise of 2C or higher, which the EU considers dangerous.
Copenhagen climate deal: ‘The world has been set a deadline’ Link to this audio
“If we end up with a weaker framework with less stringent compliance, then that is not so good for the chances of hitting 2C,” a source close to the EU negotiating team said.
News of the split comes amid mounting concern that the Copenhagen talks will not make the necessary progress.
Ban Ki-moon, the UN general secretary, told the Guardian last night that negotiations had stalled and need to “get moving”.
Ahead of an unprecedented UN climate change summit of almost 100 heads of government in New York next week, Moon said the leaders held in their hands “the future of this entire humanity”.
He said: “We are deeply concerned that the negotiation is not making much headway [and] it is absolutely and crucially important for the leaders to demonstrate their political will and leadership.”
The dispute between the US and Europe is over the way national carbon reduction targets would be counted. Europe has been pushing to retain structures and systems set up under the Kyoto protocol, the existing global treaty on climate change. US negotiators have told European counterparts that the Obama administration intends to sweep away almost all of the Kyoto architecture and replace it with a system of its own design.
The US distanced itself from Kyoto under President Bush because it made no demands on China, and the treaty remains political poison in Washington. European negotiators knew the US would be reluctant to embrace Kyoto, but they hoped they would be able to use it as a foundation for a new agreement.
If Kyoto is scrapped, it could take several years to negotiate a replacement framework, the source added, a delay that could strike a terminal blow at efforts to prevent dangerous climate change. “In Europe we want to build on Kyoto, but the US proposal would in effect kill it off. If we have to start from scratch then it all takes time. It could be 2015 or 2016 before something is in place, who knows.”
Europe is unlikely to stand up to the US, the source added. “I am not sure that the EU actually has the guts for a showdown and that may be exactly the problem.” The US plan is likely to anger many in the developing world, who are keen to retain Kyoto because of the obligations it makes on rich countries.
Under Kyoto, greenhouse gas reductions are subject to an international system that regulates the calculation of emissions, the purchase of carbon credits and contribution of sectors such as forestry. The US is pushing instead for each country to set its own rules and to decide unilaterally how to meet its target.
The US is yet to offer full details on how its scheme might work, though a draft “implementing agreement” submitted to the UN by the Obama team in May contained a key clause that emissions reductions would be subject to “conformity with domestic law”.
Legal experts say the phrase is designed to protect the US from being forced to implement international action it does not agree with. Farhana Yamin, an environmental lawyer with the Institute of Development Studies, who worked on Kyoto, said: “It seems a bit backwards. The danger is that the domestic tail starts to wag the international dog.”
The move reflects a “prehistoric” level of debate on climate change in the wider US, according to another high-ranking European official, and anxiety in the Obama administration about its ability to get a new global treaty ratified in the US Senate, where it would require a two-thirds majority vote. The US has not ratified a major international environment treaty since 1992 and President Clinton never submitted the Kyoto protocol for approval, after a unaminous Senate vote indicated it would be rejected on economic grounds.
The US proposal for unilateral rule-setting “is all about getting something through the Senate,” the source said. “But I don’t have the feeling that the US has thought through what it means for the Copenhagen agreement.”
The move could open loopholes for countries to meet targets without genuine carbon cuts, they said. Europe is not concerned that the US would exploit such loopholes, but it fears that other countries might.
The US State Department, which handles climate change, would not comment.
Stuart Eizenstat, who negotiated Kyoto for the US, said: “There has been a sea change in US attitudes [on climate] and the new president is deeply committed on this issue. But the EU needs to understand the limitations in the US. The reality is that is it impossible for my successor to negotiate something in Copenhagen beyond that which Congress will give the administration in domestic cap-and-trade legislation.”
Nigel Purvis, who also worked on the US Kyoto team, said: “It’s not welcome news in Europe but the Kyoto architecture shouldn’t have any presumed status. Many decisions were taken when the United States was not at the negotiating table. Importing the Kyoto architecture into a new agreement would leave it vulnerable to charges of repackaging.”
He denied the US move would weaken the agreement. “It is important for the US to negotiate an agreement it can join, because another agreement that did not involve the United States would set back efforts to protect the climate. Is it weaker to have a system that applies to more countries? I would argue not.”
24 comments on this story