Media Release: Sunday, 29th July, 2012
Australian Democrats challenge the big end of town with new population policy
Australia faces serious environmental degradation as a consequence of increasing human population and urgent action must be taken to curb this, say the Australian Democrats.
Announcing a new population policy endorsed by a membership ballot held this month, National Campaign Director, Darren Churchill, says the party will closely examine the population policies of other parties in determining preference flows in next year’s Federal election.
“Despite developers arguing for population increase and benefitting their own hip pockets as a consequence, taxpayers bear the cost of destruction of our unique natural environment, reduced housing supply and shortages of infrastructure.
“Our new policy argues for an increase in the nation’s humanitarian intake balanced by a scaling back of the immigration intake to environmentally sustainable levels.
“The baby bonus and family leave provisions should be scaled back with savings reallocated to education and family planning. Because the Australian Democrats believe strongly in our national obligations to the developing world, some of this money should also be diverted to further increases in our foreign aid budget particularly for family planning and contraception.
“And rather than bringing in more migrants for labour programs, we want to see an expansion of retraining programs: Australia’s 1.5 million unemployed and underemployed must be the beneficiaries of any mining boom.
“We know the big end of town won’t like this policy, but the challenge of population is simply too important to ignore,” concluded Mr Churchill.
DARREN CHURCHILL
National Campaign Director
darren.churchill@democrats.org.au
Tel: 0412 196 473
The complete policy can be found at http://www.democrats.org.au/policies/population-policy
Please see our campaign Towards a Sustainable Population
Darren Churchill: Australian Democrats Campaigns 
Leave a Reply