In 2013, Jan McNichol stood for the Stable Population Party (SPP) and polled 0.19 per cent of the primary vote. This time around the party has selected a new and young face in Timothy Lawrence. The party hopes that their name change before this by-election, to the Sustainable Population Party, will more accurately describe its purpose.
The SPP has said it did not actively campaign in 2013. Now, they are getting behind their candidate and are particularly active on social media. Mr Lawrence told No Fibs that he intends to engage at a local level as much as possible, and he was out and about in Griffith last weekend.
Mr Lawrence is a newly married 23-year-old software designer. He told No Fibs that his interest in politics and the SPP came about because of his interest in “social systems, and how they interact with our ecological systems.”
Population, he said, is the “everything issue”.
In conversations with people in the Griffith electorate, Mr Lawrence said they have expressed concerns about over-development, housing affordability, aircraft noise and the cost of living.
All of these issues, he said, relate back to the issue of a growing population, as does the impact on rising health costs and access.
“According to the AMA, we have gone from 6 hospital beds per 1000 (public and private) in 1970-71, down to 3.8 per 1000 in 2010-11”, he said.
Strategies proposed by the SPP to sustain current population levels in Australia include the removal of “government birth payments (the Family Tax Benefit A and paid parental leave) beyond a woman’s first two children”, and, “zero net migration,” such that “permanent immigration is equivalent to permanent emigration.”
Mr Lawrence said that up to 70 per cent of Australians do not want a bigger Australia by 2050, but the major parties are not listening.
The SPP has an open ticket when it comes to preferences, which encourages voters to select the SPP as number one, and whomever they like after that. Mr Lawrence said that people who vote for the SPP are not wasting their votes because they will be sending an important message to the major parties.
The SPP has a Facebook site, a website, and is very active on Twitter using the handle @PopulationParty.
– See more at: http://nofibs.com.au/2014/02/01/familiar-faces-join-griffithvotes-party-griffithelects-reports/#sthash.blp7AQNO.dpuf
One thought on “Population is the problem: SPP”
Michaela Mitchell
5 February, 2014
I did did some checking on Tim and while he seems a nice chap, he works for a gaming company that makes all the bells and whistles for gambling machines. I like a flutter now and then but half our family frittered away the other halves life savings through playing the pokies. That aint the way to go. Sorry Tim. I’m not sure you’ll make much of a hit with the Stable Pops anti-international student policy either. Nothign personal.