No endless growth

BOTH councillors Sam Aziz and Wayne Smith are under an illusion if they really believe Casey’s problems will be solved by simply lobbying state and federal governments for more infrastructure funding (Ghetto tag contested, News, 14 August).
It seems that our local councillors haven’t noticed, but public policy at both the federal and state level is hostage to right-wing politics and growth modelling, which imposes substantial collateral damage on communities, with many social and environmental problems.
This week two of Australia’s top businessmen, Dick Smith and Graeme Turner, in speeches at the National Press Club in Canberra, identified a serious problem when they both warned that the existing illusion of population growth could not go on forever.
Over the last 12 months Australia’s immigration and population rate has gone off the scale, with a record number of 240,000 migrants coming to Australia at a time when our economy already has record levels of unemployment and with many locals feeling the impact of homelessness.
At this stage, our councillors should be calling on the Federal Government to reduce our existing immigration rate to a more sustainable rate of 75,000 a year.
Further, state revenue problems can be reduced only if all our public officials insist on the big four banks paying a fairer share of taxation and demand action to shut down the multi-million dollar corporate tax avoidance schemes that flourish in the “black” economy today.
Instead of more conventional growth modeling, councillors Sam Aziz and Wayne Smith, I believe, like Dick Smith and Graeme Turner, we should be calling for government policies and programs based on balance and equity, not simply more infrastructure.
John Glazebrook,
Endeavour Hills.