Pragmatism
I was interested to read J. Dodd's letter (GLW February 24) concerning pragmatism in the PSU leadership as it seems that pragmatism is prevalent amongst all union bureaucrats at the moment.
As a member of the general staff at the University of Sydney and a member of H&REA (Health and Research Employees Association) which covers all the University's general staff, I attended a Union meeting recently to vote on a redundancy agreement that had eventuated from a Review to restructure the University. At this meeting we had two choices — to vote for a redundancy package with trade offs which included variable working hours, bankable working hours and losing a half day at Easter or a redundancy package with no trade offs but which gave slightly poorer redundancy pay to those staff who had been here for many years.
I was amazed that not only had redundancy been accepted by the Union but 3 out of 5 of the Union leaders at this meeting were urging members to vote for trade offs as well using the threat "if you don't vote for this it could be worse ..." The Vice Chancellor could not have done a better job himself!
If the subject matter had not been so tragic, the meeting would have been great material for a comedy sketch as member after member spoke in favour of the trade off agreement, stating things such as they would be happy to give up whatever conditions necessary in order that their colleagues could be made redundant (or that is basically what it came down to). Those who spoke against this agreement were heckled and treated with derision by the Union bureaucrats and the only person who questioned why we were even accepting redundancies in the first place was barely allowed to speak.
Needless to say, a majority voted in favour of redundancies with trade offs and there was a feeling of euphoria amongst those who had pushed and won that vote.
In conclusion I have decided that most Union bureaucrats are doing the dirty work for those great believers of the Market Economy with great success, and forgetting the people they are really meant to represent, have probably even forgotten why Unions were formed in the first place.
Frances Kelly
Katoomba
Selling our assets
The most disgusting sound in this election campaign is the sound of the major parties squabbling over what price they can get for selling off the taxpayers' assets.
Those assets belong to the people of this nation, not to a set of transient politicians, and have been paid for and subsidised by years of increased taxation.
After they have stripped us of these publicly owned assets, the superannuation funds and pension funds will be next to be ntly under the philosophy that any savings still remaining after years of inflation and entrepreneurial swindling have no right to exist.
C.M. Friel
Alawa NT
Population debate
Some of your feature writers have gone to bizarre lengths to misunderstand the obvious formula: Amount extracted from the environment (or environmental Impact) = Population numbers times Average Consumption (or Average Affluence) times the materials from the environment required per consumable item produced using the society's Technology, that is I = PAT. Gerry Harant in GLW 17/2/93 clearly understands enough to know that the Average consumption = Total consumption divided by human population numbers, but then suggests that it is equally valid to express the same quantity of average consumption per rat! This would be relevant only if it were rats that were doing the consuming. It is humans not rats that use aluminium products, plant apple trees and eat most apples — the examples brought up in the debate.
Gerry Harant goes on to say that P and A are not independent parameters and so anyone with high school maths can readily understand that I = PA can be easily used to prove that two equals one. I lecture mathematical modelling at a university and I can't understand this point. I do understand that P and A are not independent because total impact I is limited by the amount that can be extracted from the environment. Hence, if P keeps on increasing, then when I can no longer increase at a similar rate, A will start to fall. With the apple tree example it may be true that if the population doubles, apple consumption won't double because few of the extra people will be able to obtain apples — the average Affluence will fall.
Gerry Harant's local Victorian example is readily demolished. Assuming Victoria has grown like the rest of Australia at about 2% per annum, its population will have increased by about 29% since 1980. If the efficiency with which Victorians use resources had remained constant and the rate at which Victorians are exploited by overseas interests was also constant, average affluence would have had to decline at 2% per annum compounding to a 23% decline in average consumption over the period. The fact that a lot of consumption is industrial rather than domestic is irrelevant. Through employment and trade Victorians are living off this consumption.
One criticism of I=PAT by those who do not want to understand it, concerns the units of measurement of the quantities I, A and T. The units of measurement are not pre-specified because the formula applies to a large range of different items. Consider instead the formula P = T - R, where P stands for the "consumption of the poorer 90% of the community", T stands for "total consumption" and R stands for "consumption by the rich 10% of the community". Again this formula will apply to a diverse range of items. Since the formula is a model of an aspect of the world susceptible only to "ideologically correct" solutions, I'm sure there would be no confusion over units of measurement.
Gerry Harant doesn't like I=PAT because he feels it reduces "too many people in the poor South" and "ordinary people living too greedily in the North". Such problems, though they must be expressed much more sensitively, are huge real problems. But acceptance of the logic embodied in I = PAT doesn't imply that these problems aren't part of an even larger problem. Capitalism has run the world irrationally and has enforced an untenable commitment of growth upon us. It has caused even greater immediate problems than those highlighted by I = PAT. It has created catastrophic maldistribution of resources with mass misery and starvation. Capitalism also decrees the use of technology that maximises profits and not the use of technology that minimises impact on the environment. Capitalism must be abolished, a more caring and rational society should take its place and the problems highlighted by the model I = PAT can be dealt with. Humanity's environmental impact can then be reduced without causing suffering. Unfortunately the attitude of some of your feature writers to the common sense embodied in I = PAT shows that they don't want to be part of such a rational world.
David Kault
Townsville
Population economics
In response to Evonne Moore (Write on, GLW 88), the point of my letter was to show that how we produce what we need is just as important as how many of us there are consuming it, and only that. No one has said that the planet could hold an infinitely large population, and this has never been the real issue. The issue is, what is to be done. If human population is seen as an important environmental problem, how is this problem to be solved?
A look at the real world will show us that, for women and men in much of the Third World, children are an economic necessity. For those living in the country, children share the work alongside their parents.
Should one of these children go to the city and gain employment, the money they sent home could lift their family from constant poverty. When the children are grown, they can in turn provide for their parents, who otherwise would have no means of support. This is reality.
Now, do those who believe that global population is our most pressing problem have a global solution to this problem? Or do their solutions, as it seems is so far the case, extend only to making Australia a fortress to immigrants, in the naive and blatantly self-serving belief that a "sustainable Australia" could survive while the rest of the world became an overcrowded, ecological nightmare.
Alex Aitkin
Brisbane
Censorship danger
Although I empathise with Norman Taylor's sentiments on David Irving (Write On, GLW #89) I thoroughly disagree with banning from entering the country as a method of defeating racist and fascist ideas or movements.
Taylor says that "Free speech must be preserved even for racists, but groups like National Action (or the IRA) with a policy of it that right".
Who determines what "a policy of unending violence" is? Does it mean that Nelson Mandela should be banned from Australia for supporting armed struggle as a tactic to end apartheid? Should members of the Sandinista National Liberation Front be banned from Australia because they were involved in "unending violence"? Should Green Left Weekly be banned for reporting on the progress of the Bougainville Revolutionary Army?
The Irish Republican Army's "unending violence" is not a one-sided case. Ireland is still occupied by British troops and it is for the Irish people to determine their freedom and how they can achieve it.
Strengthening censorship, in this case the right to ban entry, gives the ruling class in this country more power to deny progressive speakers and ideas.
I think an Irving speaking tour would be useful to show up just how dead end racist and fascist ideas are. In the end the only way to defeat fascism and racism is to take it head on, politically speaking, rather than attempting to eliminate it administratively.
Finally, if the Australian government is so concerned about people who promote and spread violence why was George Bush allowed to enter the country in January 1992?
Sean Malloy
Lewisham NSW