Below are the speech notes for Michael Bayliss presentation for the episode: "How Do we Plan for Albany’s Growth? LIVE at the Albany Public Library." Michael's presentation can be listened to from 00:58:36
I want to begin by paying my respects to the hundreds of First Nations language groups across Australia, whose lands were never ceded. These are lands we continue to exploit, mow down, and concrete over in the name of progress, development, and the almighty GDP — all while telling ourselves that colonisation is something we did in the past.
As many of us in this room know all too well, there is a plan to put a dual carriageway straight through the middle of Yakamia Forest Boodja. It feels absurd — like a plot device from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. The justification? That the existing north–south connection, the South Coast Highway, is no longer “sufficient” for future population projections.
You’d think Yakamia Forest had suffered enough already. It’s surrounded by car‑dependent suburbia, as evidenced by the heartbreaking number of western ringtail possums killed on the roads. It battles invasive weeds spread by the city around it. It’s used as a dumping ground — an inevitable by‑product of our consumerist culture. And it’s constantly under threat from the next “land release” or overdevelopment proposal.
This has sparked four years of community backlash. Members of Friends of Yakamia have spent thousands of hours trying to protect this geographically small but biologically enormous corner of the earth from ecocide.
And yet, Yakamia is just one example of a much wider problem.
If I look only at my own area around Lower King and Oyster Harbour, the pattern is obvious: bushland along Alison Parade cleared for — you guessed it — another road. Massive earthworks on Francis Street and Elizabeth Street for housing expansion with that endless din of reversing earthmovers. Surveyors eyeing off a grove of trees near my home for the next round of development. Meanwhile, the Oyster Harbour estate marches outward, and Oranje Tractor — an icon of Albany and a mecca for permies and wine lovers — is now encircled by a ring road and creeping low‑rise, black‑roofed sprawl.
This isn’t just Albany. Look at the ecological devastation caused by the Bunbury Ring Road. Look at Perth, stretching 150 kilometres — the length of the entire coastline of Lebanon — wiping out Carnaby’s black cockatoo habitat while still producing a housing market that prices entire generations out.
Or look east: the endless sprawl from Tweed Heads to Noosa. Two hundred and fifty‑six kilometres of former subtropical forest and wetlands replaced with roads, subdivisions, and the roadkill remains of koalas.
And it’s not just Australia. The Amazon is being sliced open for new roads – and climate conferences. Indonesia is planning a new capital because the current one — home to 42 million people — is sinking. The urban corridor from Washington DC to Boston stretches 708 kilometres of almost unbroken development.
These examples are just the tip of the iceberg. The common thread is clear: we are fighting spot fires downwind from a world built on the assumption of endless growth.
We hear constantly about “growing the economy,” “growth and jobs,” “GDP.” But what would happen to all these spot fires if we weren’t pushing for more GDP, more cars, more roads? Would we even be talking about a road through Yakamia?
We live in a world built around the endless pursuit of endless economic growth. Since around 1950 — the period known as the Great Acceleration — human population, economic activity, and energy use have surged exponentially. If you haven’t looked at the graphs, you should: human activity shoots skyward while environmental indicators plunge downward in equal yet opposite directions. Fun times!
Since World War II, we’ve used Gross Domestic Product — GDP — as the measure of national success. It’s a crude metric that simply counts the total monetary value of goods and services produced. The architects of GDP warned that it was only meant as a temporary measure, not a long‑term goal. It has huge blind spots. Building a dual carriageway through Yakamia Forest counts as a tick in the GPD books but the thousands of volunteer hours spent removing Sydney wattle, or the wellbeing people gain from walking in the bush, don’t count whatsoever.
Since 1950, the global economy has grown by around 3.5% per year, dropping to “only” 2.5% since the new millennium. But even 2.5% annual growth means doubling every 30 years due to the exponential function. If we continue business as usual, the scale of human activity we see today will double by 2050. Think of all the mining, pollution, single‑use goods, roads, and infrastructure we already have — and the fact that we’re already exceeding planetary boundaries. Does anyone seriously believe there’s enough planet for “times two”?
Spoiler alert: of course not.
This year, Earth Overshoot Day will fall on July 30 — the point when humanity’s demand for ecological resources exceeds what Earth can regenerate in a year. In 1972, Limits to Growth warned that civilisation would collapse by around 2050 if we continued business as usual. And guess what? Spoilers again: we continued business as usual. Go team human!
Some say “technology will save us.” But time and again, technological innovation has led to the Jevons Paradox: increased efficiency leads to increased consumption. Others claim we can “decouple” economic growth from environmental impact through renewables and a service‑based economy. At a New Economy Conference, Andrew Leigh — then Minister for Productivity — said we’d be fine because we’d have a “barista‑based service economy.” Cute idea, but not very convincing when cafés are closing across Australia and coffee prices are soaring. And when all else fails, we fall back on housing speculation.
The truth is simple: endless growth on a finite planet is physically impossible. And it is at the root of almost every conservation battle we fight. In a world of perpetual growth, nothing is sacred. Everything will eventually be mined, cleared, or concreted over. Even an infinite‑lane highway through Yakamia wouldn’t be enough.
This is where the planned Degrowth movement comes in. Degrowth recognises that what goes up must come down — and that degrowth is coming whether we like it or not. “Planned degrowth” means deliberately reducing resource use and economic activity to achieve ecological sustainability and social wellbeing. As the book Economics of Arrival puts it: countries like ours need to recognise that we have arrived. We have everything we need. We need to know when to stop growing.
Instead of GDP, a degrowth society would use measures like the Genuine Progress Indicator. How happy are we? How connected are we? How well do we live with the other species in our bioregion?
Degrowth must happen at all scales — global, national, and regional. In Albany, our population grew nearly 3% from 2020, when we had 38,000 residents. Our Gross Regional Product has risen over 4%. Some on the City of Albany council want 50,000 residents by 2030.
Which brings us to the most contentious issue of all: population.
Just like GDP, our numbers cannot grow forever. At some point, we need to decide how much growth we can plan for — and after what point we need to address population itself.
Australia is fortunate in that we don’t need a draconian one‑child policy to stabilise our population. With no change to birth rates or humanitarian intake, our population would stabilise. The main driver of growth — an extra 9 million people since the Sydney Olympics — is economic migration, driven by federal policy and pressure from developers and big business who rely on a perpetually expanding customer base to keep in profit.
Population is divisive. No matter what you say, half the room will agree and half will disagree. Even within the Degrowth movement, there’s debate. But with net overseas migration of around 70,000 per year — instead of the current 300,000 — Australia’s population would stabilise around 30 million. Much of that 70,000 could be humanitarian intake, making this potentially more socially just compared to existing policy. The immigration debate is too often binary; anyone suggesting lower numbers is painted as “anti‑immigration.” But there is a third way, if we’re willing to talk openly and respectfully.
Of course, stabilising Australia’s population must be paired with global action: equitable access to reproductive healthcare, family planning, and education for women and girls. There are currently 121 million unplanned pregnancies per year — a humanitarian crisis and a major driver of global population growth.
Back to Albany. If we’re heading toward 50,000 ASAP, we need to be realistic of the consequences. A 20% population increase requires at least a 20% reduction in per‑capita vehicle use just to maintain our current — already devastating — rate of wildlife roadkill. Do we want 20% more sprawl? If growth leads to prosperity, why are so many small businesses closing on York Street?
There’s also ecological carrying capacity. One sign a society has exceeded it is when demand for water surpasses conventional sources. At 40,000 people, Albany is already facing the likelihood of a desalination plant — with all proposed sites problematic. As rainfall decreases and population rises to 50,000 or 60,000, our dependence on energy‑intensive water sources will only deepen.
I predict that Albany will grow more rapidly than what is predicted. As Western Australia heats and dries, the Great Southern may become the only habitable region. Perth’s pressures will spill south. How rapidly we grow, however, does depend on National context. The federal government’s plan to build 1.2 million homes in five years — largely to accommodate the population growth it engineered — will push more people into the regions. It’s like pouring petrol on a fire.
Our attitude toward growth shapes how we plan for it. If we assume growth equals prosperity, we’re blindsided when things fall apart. If we approach growth with caution, we might plan better.
After 15 years of community consultations across Australia, I’ve heard planners say, “Population growth isn’t the issue — we just need to plan better.” Yet in 15 years, I’ve only seen more sprawl, more car‑dependent suburbs, more prefab high‑rises with 30‑year lifespans. Developers get their way; profit trumps liveability. Good planning takes time — especially retrofitting existing neighbourhoods. Look at Fishermans Bend in Melbourne: touted as the solution to sprawl in 2013, now mired in delays, bureaucracy, and missed timelines. In the meantime, its population grew by another million.
Planners might benefit from showing more explicit humility. Instead of acting shocked when people become cynical and conclude that stopping growth might be the better option, planners should be honest about the barriers they face, why their good intentions in practice have, to date, being unsuccessful, and how they can work with the public to resteer the ship toward achievable outcomes.
I’ll end with this: in an era of environmental, political, and social crises, we need to focus on making our existing communities resilient. Community gardens in every suburb. Repair cafés. Swap‑and‑sell networks. But in late‑stage capitalism, we’ve lost the imagination for alternatives. Growth has become the only solution we can picture — even when it’s the cause of the problem.
As the saying goes: doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome is insanity.