Family values
Just as I stopped feeling sick about Hewson's conference I hear the fascist bible bashers at the Republican Convention in Texas talk about family values. Speaker after speaker ranted on in the best Nazi traditions about their dream: a dictatorship of the familists (sic) with secret police "grilling" childless couples as to the reasons why they did not want to have any children.
And Ross "Parrot" is in the same mould while Clinton is probably just testing the waters. It should also be kept in mind that windbag Bush used to be pro-abortion. Thus hypocrisy is as always rife while countless women cannot have an abortion, while homosexuals are denied basic liberties, while progressive sex education is condemned and while a quarter of the nation lives in poverty. Australia, of course, is eagerly copying from the US which means many of the battles of 20 years ago will have to be fought again.
The fascist, survival of the richest, anti-gay, pro two or six children per family and anti-feminist god is certainly blessing his beloved Republican America.
Michael Rose-Schwab
Rapid Creek NT
E.E. Judd
If the cause of Australian historical justice is to be served a tribute should be paid to Ernest Edward Judd who occupied the position of secretary of the Socialist Labor Party for many years. There are four good reasons why this should be done:
First, Judd's speech from the dock that was made on December 3, 1918 at the Central Criminal Court in Sydney was a very able exposition of the causes of the imperialist war.
He asserted that it was a war for markets and colonies for the benefit of the plutocracy. This address in my view compares favourably with the outstanding address delivered by Georgi Dimitrov at the Leipzig Reichstag fire trial in Germany in 1933.
Secondly, Judd had never been overseas, but in the 1930s he denounced the terrible crimes of Stalin and the travesty of justice of the ignominious Moscow trials of 1936 to 1938.
Thirdly, after World War II Judd was not deceived by the failure to implement and extend democracy in the countries that were known as the People's Democracies of Europe.
Unlike the Communist Party, until about 1965 Judd never hesitated to reveal the truth concerning Leon Trotsky and his outstanding contribution to the cause of socialism.
It is to the credit of Laurie Aarons and his brother Eric Aarons that the malicious libels that had formerly been propagated about Trotsky were repudiated. These measures met with strong opposition from some communists who were unwilling to evaluate the former Soviet Union in an objective way.
Fourthly, in 1990 Bill Kelty, the secretary of the ACTU, advocated the amalgamation of the small craft unions. In 1919 Judd published a booklet called The Case for One Big Union.
It is not my intention to hero-worship E.E. Judd but I submit that the time is long overdue when the Labor movement should recognise the valuable service that he rendered to the cause of world peace and socialism.
Bernie Rosen
Strathfield NSW
Immigration — 1
As one of those who support not only a halt to immigration but also negative population growth and negative economic growth as "a valid response to the environment crisis" I must point out that many of Peter Boyle's arguments are simply unsupported assertions (Write on, GLW #67).
Opposing immigration and recognising that "population and social justice are not separate problems" are not mutually exclusive.
Unsustainable population growth is certainly a global problem, but we do not have a global political or economic system, and unsustainable Australian population growth can certainly "be addressed by stopping people from migrating to Australia".
Overpopulation in Australia is not "relative" to Hong Kong, Bangladesh or Singapore, it is, and will remain, relative to the long term sustainability of the total Australian ecosystem, and that means more than just the needs of human beings.
High rates of population growth in the Third World are a direct result of the absence of social justice? Nonsense! They are the direct result of:
1. improved food supply, injecting energy into the ecosystem;
2. vastly improved medical care, with a consequent drop in infant mortality;
3. religious influence, beliefs and practices and
4. a totally irresponsible attitude to the relationship between family size and the availability of resources or a failure to recognise that relationship.
How Peter Boyle reconciles the perennial furphy that "Poverty encourages people to have many children to try to provide material security" with the results of the uncontrolled population growth of Africa is beyond understanding. Where is the material security of the peoples of Somalia, Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Liberia and Mozambique for instance?
Until global population growth is curbed, and reversed, there is no chance of a "fairer international economic and social
As for Peter Boyle's slurs of "crude, biologically deterministic notions", "racist in effect" and "narrow national chauvinism of the anti-immigration lobby", these are the weapons of those unable to validate their opinions with fact or logic.
C.M. Friel
Alawa NT
Immigration — 2
Peter Boyle, in responding to my letter dealing with population issues in Australia (GLW #65 and #66) should maybe consider that those who resort to the derisive slinging of unsubstantiated insults at those holding valid opposing views usually do so partly as an intimidatory tactic, and partly from a lack of rational argument with which to support their own ideological viewpoint.
Europeans invaded this land 200 years ago and in that short time have wreaked havoc on the environment and genocide on the existing inhabitants who lived here peacefully and harmoniously for upwards of 45,000 years.
Expressing a desire to both learn from and emulate Aboriginal land management practices is neither patronising, illogical nor opportunistic. Boyle bandies these words around in the hope that by slinging enough mud, some of it may stick. His resurrection of the tired old tag of racism also belongs to this category.
If Boyle wishes for humanitarian reasons to open Australia's doors wide, then it must surely be to refugees, not migrants.
There are seventeen million officially defined refugees worldwide (Australia's total population). In fact, the real number is far in excess of this. There are forty million in the horn of Africa alone facing death by starvation. Then there is Pakistan, Burma, the Philippines, Bosnia, Timor, Iraq ...
Add to this the number of women facing discrimination, injustice, oppression and poverty in the world (women own only one percent of the world's property) and it becomes obvious that, on purely humanitarian grounds, at least half of the world's population deserve entry into Australia before migrants.
It is clearly nonsensical to claim that global injustice can be addressed through immigration.
It is time Australians considered calmly and logically how many people we can safely and sustainably accommodate.
Humanitarian motives aside, if humanity is to survive, it is also time to address global injustice and, thereby, population restraint. The correct and logical way that this may be accomplished is firstly by the First World reducing its population and profligate consumption, and additionally by providing debt relief to the Third World, ceasing the arms trade and by greatly increasing the quality Aid.
Diana Evans
Balwyn, Vic
Immigration — 3
Peter Boyle's arguments in favour of immigration ignore some important arguments raised by previous correspondents including:
1. Immigration is a ridiculously inefficient method of redistributing resources. Every hundred thousand dollars spent on providing infrastructure in Australia for a single migrant could instead be used to assist hundreds in the third world.
2. Australians consume far more than their fair share of global resources, so increasing the number of Australians actually increases, rather than decreases, global inequity.
3. In Australia biodiversity is declining as a result of human activity at a greater rate than almost anywhere else. By this measure Australia is suffering far more from overpopulation than Bangladesh.
Finally Peter Boyle appears confused about the idea of carrying capacity. In a rational and fair world each country would have a population less than or equal to its carrying capacity. However there are crowded yet affluent countries that have populations far higher than their carrying capacities. The crowded affluent countries achieve this by exploiting the carrying capacities of many other countries to provide for their own populations. The existence of crowded affluent countries indicates exploitation. It doesn't invalidate the idea of carrying capacity.
In my opinion the ethical questions of global inequity and environmental damage are best answered by Australians living more frugally, having fewer children and giving greatly increased amounts of appropriate foreign aid. Supporting immigration is not an appropriate response to these ethical questions.
David Kault
Townsville