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There are two questions in this election campaign – one on climate and one on tax – which you should be able to answer yourself or be satisfied that Labor can, otherwise you should vote for the Coalition.

Presentation to Sustainable Population Australia. Brisbane. 27 April 2019.

Nearly everyone at this Sustainable Population Australia* event is most likely utterly perplexed as to why far more people are not seeing the obvious: that Australia’s population trajectory spells worsening lives for most Australians; extinction for many of our species; a falling capacity to help feed the world’s people; and a lot of other adverse consequences.

Having worked in and observed the Australian media for more than 40 years I might be able to shed some insight as to why. 

There is a corollary to the refrain: “I have paid taxes all my life and I am entitled to an old-age pension.” It is this: “I have enjoyed roads, education, health, police, defence and a myriad other things provided by the government all my life, so shouldn’t I pay a little tax when I die?”

Similarly, there is a corollary to the refrain: “I have worked hard all my life to build up some wealth so I am entitled to leave it to my kids or whomever I want?” It is this: “Why should some people get a richly undeserved windfall just because they are lucky enough to have wealthy parents?”

Rugby Australia is doing more damage to its own reputation by the bullying and intimidation of its employee-contractor Israel Folau over the expression of his religious beliefs than Folau’s original over-the-top expression of those beliefs.

For the first time in more than 300 years, England has not been able to bully Ireland to get its own way. This week, the old divide-and-rule tactics of the British Empire fell flat because Ireland is no longer on its own. It has 26 rock-solid friends in the European Union who have vowed not to drop the Irish backstop in any arrangement with Britain to leave the European Union.

It used to be that Labor’s ideology was an impediment to innovation in the economy, but now the Coalition has allowed ideology to be an impediment, as was starkly illustrated by its troglodyte attitude to renewables and electric vehicles in this week’s Budget.

The NSW election followed the voting trend away from major parties, but it also helped answer the reason for the trend in a way not shown in previous federal and state elections.

For too long we have been looking at what the major parties are doing (well or badly) for the answer. But the answer lies elsewhere.

The population spreadsheet:

Ian Turnbull QC (ret.) a former Crown prosecutor in Rhodesia and after emigrating to Australia became First Parliamentary Counsel from 1986 to his retirement in 1993 has written an incisive satire on the jury system. Click here and a proposal for reform. Click here..