In June 2025, Michael and Mark participated in a community consultation weekend on the future development of North Albany. Michael later presented his observations at the Albany Community Environment Centre forum ahead of the City of Albany elections in September. His presentation explained to prospective councillors and fellow environmentalists why urban planning matters for both social wellbeing and ecological resilience. It also invited attendees to reflect upon the long‑term consequences of unchecked growth for the city’s future.

For this episode, Michael reads out this talk for posterity, which can also be read on the PGAP blog HERE. This prompts an open discussion with Mark around issues such as:

• Albany’s growth pains and the impact this has for future planning, housing security and the natural environment;

• How face to face community consultation, including Citizen Assemblies, can encourage cooperative debate and discussion, in contrast to the divisiveness which is so common in online or social media debates;

• How holistic approaches to debate can ensure that everyone can find common ground and navigate difference of opinion across many critical issues, including overpopulation;

• The importance of including post-growth thinking into our conversations, to encourage people to think about the bigger picture and act proactively as well as reactively;

• Finding the time to be in a space outside of language and narrative. An article, written by Michael in 2023, argues why the pursuit of growth makes this all the more difficult. Link HERE;

• Election fatigue in which it seems to be a case of the trees voting for the axe at federal, state and local levels, and:

• Finally, on a darkly humours note, we imagine what kind of apocalypse we face when world coffee stocks run out.

As we draw a close to season seven, we reflect on a very good year for PGAP. This has been our longest season to date, beginning as far back as November 2024, when we broadcasted the radio documentary ‘Rethinking Sustainability’. Since then, Season Seven has covered many topics across fifteen episodes, such as steady state economics, techno dystopia, regenerative agriculture and a panel discussion on Degrowth at the University of New South Wales. This year, PGAP was recognised by the site MillionPodcasts as being in the top ten global podcasts that covers overpopulation and in the top fifty podcasts on Sustainable Living. This is very encouraging news to hear as we take a break over the festive season and plan for season eight.

While we are on our break, we encourage you to share this and other episodes of PGAP with your friends, family and networks. We are grateful to anyone who takes the time to review and rate us on Apple Podcasts or your favourite podcast platform. We are also appreciative when people take the time to contact us directly with feedback and suggestions for future episode topics or guests. Many of our interviews this season came about from community suggestions or from prospective guests who emailed us. Reaching out is so important, not just for building connection but for helping us to broaden our range of episode topics and guests.

Last, but certainly not least, we extend our gratitude to Sustainable Population Australia (SPA), which has supported PGAP since its inception in July 2020. This season, we also bid farewell to John Coulter, a long-time leader of SPA and the wider post-growth movement in Australia who sadly passed away last year. We welcomed SPA’s new patron, Anne Poelina, and spoke with Isaac Kabongo, the Ugandan CEO of the Ecological Christian Organisation, who has represented SPA at COP events. You can learn more about SPA here.

Fortunately, there are a few urban planners who recognise that transitioning to a degrowth, steady-state system is imperative for the future of urban planning. Our special guest, Emeritus Professor Michael Buxton (OAM) is one such expert.

Michael Buxton is one of the most well known and most quoted planning professors in Australia and has taught thousands of planning students over the years at RMIT University and Monash University, as well as working in the public service for 12 years. Despite officially being retired, Michael continues to play a huge role in town planning issues, including being interviewed for podcasts such as PGAP.

As a resident of Melbourne, Michael discusses his home city as a case study throughout the interview to illustrate the current state of urban planning. In particular, he draws attention to the Victorian government’s obsession with ‘growth at all cost’ and their ongoing deregulation of the urban planning sector.

This episode provided us with an opportunity to discuss the importance of systemic change towards a post growth society and why this will lead to much better planning and development outcomes.

We invite you to share this very important episode among your networks and rate and review PGAP on Apple Podcast, or contact us with your thoughts and ideas. PGAP is made possible by the support of Sustainable Population Australia (SPA). All opinions, views and legacies past and present of our guests are exclusive theirs and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of PGAP or SPA.

Speaking of Sustainable Population Australia, PGAP co-hosts Mark Allen and Michael Bayliss worked with SPA on an animated video, "The Endless Growth Paradigm", launched in 2019. The animation explores why we need to break from a system of endless economic and population growth. Otherwise, our neighbourhoods will never be dense enough, our cities will never stop sprawling and we will never catch up with the infrastructure backlog. The video has amassed ten thousand views on YouTube and we believe it is still very relevant five years later.

If you are keen to revolutionise the town planning sector, we encourage you to check out Town Planning Rebellion or, if you are a resident of Victoria, Planning Democracy, chaired by Kelvin Thomson.

PGAP has explored the issue of urban planning and overdevelopment several times. If you would like to find out more, we recommend our interviews with Kelvin Thomson, Alex Baumann and David Holmgren. Looking outside Victoria, we interviewed several Western Australian groups fighting overdevelopment. You may also be interested in your co-hosts Mark and Michael’s own perspectives in the episode: “Housing Crisis?? What Housing Crisis!!”

Special Guest: Michael Buxton.

This first episode of the season is the culmination of a personal journey for them both. For Michael it is an opportunity to share his lived experiences in the West Australia rental market (in what has been labelled as the asbestos capital of the world) - that is too broken to care about whether the basic health and safety needs of renters are being met. Mark who shared in some of those experiences, goes on to look at how it all fits into a wider discussion on the systemic changes that are so urgently required in our town planning and housing sectors.

These experiences have also been written down in the form of a blog: “A Year in Asbestosville: A Farcical Tale of Systemic Failure.” This can be read on the PGAP blog or at Michael’s author profile on Medium. You are spoiled for choice!

In addition to our personal journeys, we also discuss some Degrowth related current affairs. For example…

Did you know that November 15th is the date that our global population will reach 8 billion people. Yay! But what does 8 billion mean for the planet, the environment and for you? Sustainable Population Australia (SPA), who support this podcast, are inviting you to answer this very question in 100 words (or less!) for your chance to win a prize. A link can be found to the competition here. The competition is open to all Australian residents who are not currently members of SPA and it is open until November 11th.

Also, how could we not talk about Liz Truss on a program about Degrowth? Before her six weeks as PM was over, Truss bemoaned the supposed anti-growth coalition. So, a growing number of people thought that this was a great idea and started one up. Mark is currently in conversation with the coalition about how best to frame the population issue in a way that prevents it from becoming overly divisive. Want to find out more? You can visit their website here.

(image found through internet image search).

Finally, we would like to give a nod to Dr. Alex Baumann, who has just released a YouTube video, “The Land Issue | A Social Science Sustainability Breakthrough". Our season 3 interview with Alex, ‘A Public Housing Revolution for Degrowth’ has become PGAP’s highest performing ever episode. Hopefully this will help bring the importance of public housing and its role in our transition to degrowth, further into public consciousness.

Perhaps we are making a difference because this year, PGAP nudged into the top 6% of global podcasts! With your help, we can get PGAP into the top 5% of listens, which we would like to think is where it belongs. You can do your bit by sharing this and other episodes of PGAP with your friends, family and networks. You can also rate and review us on Apple Podcasts so that others may be inspired to give us a go. Let’s help to build a movement of movements 😊.

You can find out more about Mark, Holistic Activism and Town Planning Rebellion here
You can find out more about Michael at his website here

Alex discusses why the privatisation of land forces us all into lifestyles that are antithetical to the degrowth movement and why housing needs to be at the core of post-growth activism. Alex also explains why public housing is one overlooked solution and how reinvigorating this asset is part and parcel to a degrowth future. Ready to have your whole perspective on housing turned around? This is the episode for you!

Dr. Alex Baumann and I found each other on the Town Planning Reblellion (TPR) Facebook group. Find out more about TPR and its parent organisation, Holistic Activism here. Want to be an ACTIVE part of the housing revolution? This is a great place to start.

I interviewed TPR founder, Mark Allen on season 2’s “Exploring Christie Walk EcoHousing with Adelaide Chronicles and Town Planning Rebellion.” If you liked the themes in this episode you’ll love that one.

I first came across Alex’s good work in an article in The Conversation titled: “We are the 1%: the wealth of many Australians puts them in an elite club wrecking the planet.” The article was co-written with Samuel Alexander, whose has been a inspiration for me in the Degrowth movement.

Speaking of Samuel Alexander! The song of choice for this episode, “Meditations on Simplicity” is from the Mortimer’s Method album ‘Dreaming Backwards, Falling Awake’, based on excerpts from the Degrowth fiction novel ‘Entropia’ by Samuel Alexander.

‘Entropia’ isn’t the only fiction work on post-growth out there. PGAP interviewed Sharon Ede, post-growth activist and author of ‘Mage’, in season two of PGAP.

Alex is even more animated on video! He explains many of the points raised in this episode and more in the YouTube video “A New Path to Sustainability.”

Ted Trainer is an inspiration for Alex and was brought up several times during the interview. You can hear the PGAP interview with Ted in full here.

Finally, Martin Tye, Australian regional chapter director of CASSE, will be giving a zoom presentation for the Sustainable Living Festival on "Degrowth & the Steady State" on 06th February, 9am AEDT. More information can be found on the SLF website. Martin was a guest on the first ever episode of PGAP and I’m sure he will be just as excellent in his presentation as he was on the episode! Essentially, I can't recommend him enough.

Please contact PGAP with your thoughts and feedback or rate and review us on Apple Podcast. Share PGAP with your friends, families, network, your bitter enemies and the neighbourhood cat. Basically, everyone.

Post-Growth Australia Podcast is made possible from the kind support of SPA

Special Guest: Alex Baumann.