Quick Review of the Bankstown Rezoning Issue

In October 2014, Bankstown Council sent residents a letter announcing publication of four 'Draft Local Area Plans', and inviting comments. The letter was dated 7th Oct, and submissions were to close on the 14th November. As the letter was individually addressed it seems likely copies were only sent to residents actually within or adjacent to the planned rezoning areas.

North Central
91 pages		 North East
87 pages		 South East
93 pages		 South West
85 pages
Fig 1. The four Draft Local Area Plans.

In these plans, Bankstown Council proposes to rezone large areas that are presently one and two storey residential, to 3 and 4 storey high-density housing.
See: Maps of the nine areas to be rezoned, and Links to the planning documents.

Council's justification for this, is that they have been given population increase projections by the State Government, that require large increases in population density all across Sydney.
Yes, the same insanity is and will be happening everywhere in Sydney. And probably other cities too.
See: Councils's Planning Timeline, and News Articles.

There is no admission of awareness among Council's planners that their rezoning will result in the destruction of all existing houses in the rezoned areas, and severe disruption to most of those living in these houses. Of course they are aware of it, but they gloss over this detail with endless pages of waffle about 'green streets' and so on.
My response to Council's South West Local Area Plan is fairly long, and as it's a reply to people proposing to destroy my home, workshop and personal ambitions, there's some strong language. That's why there is this Quick Review.

Some landowners may be pleased by the steep rise in land valuation due to the rezoning, and happy to sell up and go.
On the other hand many people like their homes and will be very unhappy (through to enraged, as I am) about being pressured to move. And pressured they will be, with greatly increased land rate bills, severely damaged utility of their property as high-rise units are constructed around it, and every effort of property developers to force them to sell and leave. Property developers tend to be scumbags, accustomed to acting at the limits (and beyond) of the law. Those attempting to resist moving will not have a happy time of it, if these plans go ahead.

Combined, those factors amount to an eviction notice for existing home owners in and near the rezoned areas. Bankstown Council's plans are effectively a forced large scale population relocation edict, handed down to hundreds of residents. Hundreds of homes will be demolished. Most of them owned by people who own their land and home, and until this announcement believed their property and future enjoyment of it was secure.

Hell, it's as if 'home owners' don't actually own their land at all. If hundreds of people can be forced to move by a bureaucratic edict, does 'land ownership' still mean anything? I was under the impression this country isn't a Communist dictatorship; maybe I'm mistaken? Property rights, hello?

Such relocation orders could be justified if there was a sound reason. Houses threatened by a mountain about to undergo a huge landslip, severe mine subsidence or something like that. But in this case the so-called justification is utterly invalid. Furthermore I argue it's not merely mistaken, it's a deliberate lie. A nationally destructive deception being pushed for reasons of corrupt personal financial profit by politicians and their associates.

The claimed need for increased housing density depends on one assertion, and one only — projections of future massive population increase. No discussion of the validity of those population projections is entered into by proponents of the rezonings, they are just presented as inevitable fact.

However, the projections are not fact, not inevitable, not even likely. Upon examination of their origins (the Australian Bureau of Statistics — ABS) it turns out that:

  1. Australian population increase is almost entirely a result of immigration. Australia's total fertility rate (births per female) has been below the value of 2.1 required for stable population, since 1975. The actual value is presently around 1.9, and likely to stay there indefinitely.
  2. Immigration levels have been raised extremely high (200,000 to 300,000 per year) in recent years, greatly increasing population rise. The projections all assume immigration yearly numbers in this range are maintained into the future. Note that those new arrivals then have children, so the real increase figures due to immigration are even higher.
  3. The ABS seems to have been instructed to pretend firstly that immigration levels are relatively immutable (not simply a policy that can be altered radically at will), and secondly that 'natural increase' in Australia is greater than it really is (thus obscuring as much as possible that immigration is likely the only cause of actual increase.)
  4. If the ABS really is fudging the natural increase figures to obscure the weighting of immigration to the population increase, it's likely immigration is actually the only source of increase. This fits with the total fertility rate having been well below replacement level since 1975.
  5. The ABS documents reveal a mindset in which static or slowly falling population is considered officially unacceptable. Also that it's assumed the government will ensure that absolutely won't happen — by maintaining immigration high enough to keep Australia's population rising sharply.
All these points are interesting in themselves, but they also lead unavoidably to consideration of possible motives.
Who is it that wants to keep immigration so high, what do they pretend are their reasons, what are their true reasons, and what is likely to happen in the real world future?

Those matters are discussed elsewhere. For this quick review we'll skip directly to:

Conclusions
  1. All pretended altruistic justifications for high immigration are rubbish. Misdirections to cover the true motive. They also completely ignore crucial practical issues such as long term ecological sustainability, and social cohesion.
  2. The true primary motive is to inflate property values. For the personal profit of most politicians and their associates, with investment portfolios heavily involved with real estate. Since Australian industry is dying (more government stupidity and meddling) there's not much else to  productively invest  speculate in. This makes real estate very important to the one percenters, and they'll do anything to prop it up.
  3. Those with a wider understanding of world events than as portrayed by the MSM, may notice these rezoning plans just happen to have a lot in common with the UN's Agenda 21 objectives. For those who don't already understand terms like Agenda 21 or MSM, nevermind.
  4. The population increase projection assumption that 'all other things remain constant' in the present state of the world is incredibly stupid and ill-informed. The people who think they are going to keep the Australian property market value rising forever via immigration are imbeciles, who've obviously never been introduced to Mr Murphy. Their plan isn't going to work. There are too many likely, even inevitable rug-pulling scenarios in the world's near future. But that doesn't help the people doomed to lose their homes shortly due these rezoning insanities.

Government immigration policy is totally a political choice. That choice is being driven by nothing but personal gain for the politicians involved, with only a shallow pretense of consideration of the national benefit. These actions are shortsighted, ignorant and treasonous to the nation. Everyone involved should be thrown from office.

The personal greed of politicians, resulting in monstrosities such as Bankstown Council's rezoning plans (aka forced population relocation) and other replications across Sydney, will result in the ruination of hundreds, possibly thousands of Australian citizens' lives.

When the side effects of ridiculously high immigration supposedly require massive forced relocations of thousands of homeowners in each major city, taking their homes and land in order to pack on higher density housing, then the stupidity has obviously gone way too far.

Enough. Stop it now.

Some quotes on the topic of Freedom.