The Steady Stater
The Steady Stater
A Song for a Post-Growth Australia (with Michael Bayliss)
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Michael Bayliss of the Post-Growth Australia Podcast likes all kinds of communication, whether it’s hosting thoughtful and conversational interviews, his communications role at Sustainable Population Australia, or spreading ecological messages with his band, Shock Octopus. This week, Brian puts Michael in the hotseat to discuss these projects, Blockade Australia and direct action, Green Party-backed housing sprawl and a whole lot more.
Michael's website: https://michaelbayliss.org/
Post-Growth Australia Podcast: https://pgap.fireside.fm/
The following transcript has been formatted for both accuracy and clarity. On occasion the text may differ slightly from what was literally spoken. If you wish to compare audio to text each section has timestamps that correspond to the recording above. Please let us know of any glaring errors.
Pat Choate:From the Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy, this is The Steady Stater, a podcast dedicated to discussing limits to growth and the steady state economy.
Brian Czech:Welcome to the show! I'm your host, Brian Czech, and our guest today is Michael Bayliss, National Communications Manager at Sustainable Population Australia for SPA. SPA is a non-partisan advocacy group that works toward an ecologically sustainable human population. In kind of a role reversal here, Michael is also the host of the Post-Growth Australia Podcast. He's been broadcasting thoughtful and entertaining interviews and commentary since the summer of 2020, basically in sync with The Steady Stater. Michael is also a musician, former social worker, and a former political candidate. He's been trying everything to move us to a sustainable post-growth world, and we like that kind of ambition. Michael Bayliss, welcome to The Steady Stater!
Michael Bayliss:Thank you so much on having me on, Brian. And dare I say, I'm a huge fan of CASSE. I'm a huge fan of you. And as a fellow podcast host, I'm a massive fan of The Steady Stater. So I'm sorry if that's a bit of a fanboy start. But I thought I'd better get that out of the way.
Brian Czech:That's the kind of start we like, thanks so much. Well, we know you're a steady stater, you're a CASSE signatory, and your website and your podcast are loaded with great steady state stuff. I want to ask you kind of -- a kind of a personal question. But you know -- semi-personal I guess -- you know, you left the city of Melbourne not too long ago, and move to Western Australia, closer to your home city of Perth. I have to ask was global heating a factor in that decision?
Michael Bayliss:In parts, although going to Western Australia to escape heat is a little bit of an oxymoron, because I've moved to the extreme south of Western Australia which has a very temperate climate due to the cold oceans. I think really, one of the big reasons of leaving Melbourne is I couldn't stand the thought of being in a huge megalopolis growing at about 100,000 people per year, and with all the congestion and concrete joys that brings with it. I'm glad I have moved, because Melbourne is certainly having quite a few problems at the moment, quite a few protests, and quite a few differences of opinion. It seems like Western Australia's environmental laws are now better than Victoria's, and Victoria, where Melbourne is, was supposed to be the left wing states so, swings and roundabouts, Brian.
Brian Czech:Very interesting in it. Certainly the part about getting out of that congestion resonates with all of us around here, I suspect, Evidently the most listened-to episode of your podcast -- and once again, that's the Post-Growth Australia Podcast -- remains the first episode featuring Martin Tye. Some of our listeners may recall that Martin is a CASSE Chapter Director. Namely, he's the Australian Regional Communities Chapter Director. Now, Michael, we know Martin can be compelling, as anyone who gets his Twitter feed can attest, but why do you think out of all the episodes you've produced that one seems to have struck such a chord?
Michael Bayliss:Well, I think the passage of time, plays a little bit to do with it. It's been around a lot longer than the other episodes, and so it collected listens over time. But look, that aside, I suspect the message of CASSE just rings loud and clear. And Martin is also a very very effective communicator. He's been very good for me for a number of years. He actually got me into an interview where I interviewed Ngunnawal, indigenous advocate in Canberra, on First Nation's perspective on overdevelopment, and population growth in Canberra, which has led me on the path to trying to bring a diversity of voices on the table on this very divisive issue on population. But Martin such a great communicator, he taught me into getting into Twitter and how to be a better tweeter -- I always thought Twitter was just a forum where social justice warriors go to cancel it. So, you know Martin's posts and the post-growth realm can sometimes be criticized for being a bit overly academic. But Martin has a great fantastic ability to make it so tangible and real for people. And I think ultimately, that's why that episode did so well.
Brian Czech:Yeah, we love Martin. And you're right. He's a great communicator. Those folks out there on Twitter, or if you're not, you should get on it. You can find Martin Tye -- Tye is T-Y-E. Yeah, it's a great Twitter feed. Now, Michael, you've spent some time working in Africa, including Kenya and Uganda. And evidently, another of your favorite interviews was with the Ugandan-born journalist Florence Bondel. She spoke with you about overpopulation, which is a profoundly important issue in Uganda. Uganda, having the youngest population in the world, something like 77% of the populace is under 25 years of age. Now, Michael, you seem to make a special effort to promote the voices of women from these financially strapped places. Does that bring you into some surprising -- or surprising effect of I should say -- networks? And what did what did you learn from that interview with Florence Bondel?
Michael Bayliss:One of my biggest motivators is there's a lot of misconceptions when it comes to population. There's a lot of assumptions, particularly from the left and very well-meaning people that you know, we're speaking on behalf of the Global South and blaming women from the Global South, our consumption habits. So there is actually very little dialogue out there are people from the Global North, actually, you know, talking to people from the Global South on this issue. So interviews with Florence Blondel are very important. She's so succinctly and passionately and viscerally, just cut down through so many of those misconceptions and myths -- that there is a demand for contraception for family planning by women in the global south, that's just been unmet. And what family planning and these initiatives do is try to close the gap between demand and supply to give people in the global south to same rights and access to family planning and contraception that us in the Global North take for granted.
Brian Czech:And sticking with Uganda for a moment. What about Bobi Wine? I know he's a super popular entertainer and politician among the younger and middle age crowd in Uganda. And he seems to have a network of smart steady state thinkers and knows potential ministers. We've met some of them. And I'm wondering how would that look if a president from the heart of Africa said to the rest of the world, you know what, we reject the Western World Bank globalized push for economic growth -- we don't care about GDP. We want our country in our culture intact. And that's our priority moving forward. How heroic would that be, Michael?
Michael Bayliss:I mean, that would be an absolute dream come true. I know there are some countries in the world that are already beacons for a degree of change, whether we're looking at Costa Rica, or in Central America, or New Zealand, exploring well-being models of growth and moving away from the GDP, to some extent Bhutan, Ecuador, before they voted in a government that kind of reverse some of those trends. But I've been very impressed by some of the movers and shakers in Uganda. It's certainly far from perfect, but, that would be absolutely amazing. I'd love to see that just somewhere in Central Africa, sticking up the two fingers to the system or bring it on.
Brian Czech:Exactly. Your podcast is supported, of course by Sustainable Population Australia, and their vision is a relationship between people and the environment in which the human population stays within planetary boundaries. It appears they're quite alright with you emphasizing the link between overpopulation and the overgrown economy. Unlike a lot of other population organizations that never really connect the dots. Were they always leaders that way or did you bring that to the table?
Michael Bayliss:I have spoken to many people in Sustainable Population Australia who have all shared their perspective that it's so much easier to talk about population, if you talk about it within the broader context of the post-growth, degrowth, alternative economic change models. And I think the reason for that is people know where they stand with you then. You know, they know you what your ulterior motive right on the table is about talking about population, you know that it's not some nefarious eugenics movement. It's like most people agree on principle that you can't grow infinitely on a finite planet, and that the economies worldwide need to slow down even go back a little bit in the cases of the Global North. So, once you factor that in, and once you talk about the fact well, you can't have a steady state or degrowth economy if your population is exponentially growing. So I think within that context, it is so much easier to talk about. It's also a lot easier to disagree with people, there have been plenty of people on my podcasts who've had a completely different perspective on population. But we agree on the degrowth and post-growth. So, I like to think that I can engineer a dialogue that shows another way that you don't have to be at loggerheads, you can have differences of opinion, but also find a middle ground.
Brian Czech:That's a great answer. Meanwhile, Michael, at your podcast, one of your favorite topics is housing. You've noted that Australia loses 2 million hectares to sprawl every year, (that's about 5 million acres for American listeners). You also talked about some proposals to build a million new houses in Australia. Now we looked into who is touting such a landscape breaker-- we assumed it would be the realtors and developers and all backed by the big banks. But we were astonished to find that it was The Green Party! They seem to blame property developers and multiple home owners for unaffordable housing, but their solution is to try and build their way around the problem.
Michael Bayliss:Yes, well, the problem is with many in the environmental movements is that they think it's just a problem of running the things we build. So it's fine to carpet the continent with houses and concrete over what was once natural land to build those a billion new dwellings, so long as they all run on solar panels. And, you know, I always argue we've got one of the worst species extinction rates, I think, at least in the OECD, and I think comparable to many global south countries in Australia, in part due to our ridiculous urban sprawl experiment. And from the perspective of a koala, it doesn't matter how many solar panels you have on a house, you know, once your habitat has been mowed, once there's the road linking in between all your fragmented habitats, and once you've been run over by everyone's SUVs that might be run on, you know, the electricity grid or something. You know, you can have all the renewable energies in the world. But once you've paved paradise and built a parking lot -- thank you for that, Joni Mitchell -- Well, that's something you just never going to get back. So that's one of the reasons why I'm a huge critic of the housing market. It is the coalface -- I say that, ironically -- of Australia's growth-based economy in the last stages of late stage capitalism.
Brian Czech:Yeah, it's really a light in a pro-growth Australian economy. One of your many titles that we didn't mention at the top of the show today was miner! That's M-I-N-E-R. You labored in a bauxite mine in your younger days; bauxite being the world's main source of aluminum, and Australia being the world's biggest producer thereof. So how does your time in the mine inform your post-growth messaging, Michael?
Michael Bayliss:Well, I like to argue that as a Western Australian -- because I was born and bred in Western Australia -- that there aren't many options for an aspiring young person other than to mine. I wasn't directly mining, I was actually in the ergonomics sector. And I was filming safety videos for the mining speculators onsite in the Gera forests, which is, you know, the second degrees of separation from actually doing the thing. So, you know, wipe my hands clean of responsibility -- no, not really. I talked to one of the miners, and he was driving me around and he said, what we're doing is just absolutely reprehensible. It breaks my heart. He said, don't tell anyone I'm telling the world now. Though I won't give his name. Look, I wrote a song from that. It was the first song I ever wrote for my new -- for what was then my new band in 2009, Shock Octopus. It was called A Deer! Caught! In The Headlights! And it's based around that existential dread. There's indigenous people or the other species that we share the continent with feel when they see their homelands being cleared for progress. The lyrics are quite vague, so it was a bit weird live sets to see everyone dancing around to that song, having the times of their lives and that became a live staple favorite, when really, the context is really nothing to celebrate.
Brian Czech:Well, this will kind of come out of nowhere. But how do you like to set us a precedent right here on The Steady Stater and sing us a stanza from one of your Shock Octopus favorites? Like maybe A Deer! Caught! In The Headlights?
Michael Bayliss:Oh, dear, that's putting me on the spot. Alright. Well, the chorus of the song goes, "boom time make me wanna holler, boom time drawn me to pallor, boring new holes through your wood." So that's one line from it.
Brian Czech:I think that gives us a flavor of that song. And yeah, we need I think we need more of that. I'm really curious how much luck have you had in graining the masses with some ecological economics via rock music?
Michael Bayliss:Very interesting question. I think we made, the band has made the ecological stuff more in the forefront of what we do. I think when we started, we're more interested in just being a band first. And you know, the message seconds, but we've really pushed the message more forward in the last few years. And though I can't say we, you know, set the charts ablaze. We have had a lot of reviews. In fact, one magazine got into contact with me and asked me to list my top five favorite existential dread environmental songs, which got published. And it was really great to be able to share that because I got to share some of my other musicians and artists that have really inspired the lyrical and the themes of my own work during the years yeah.
Brian Czech:We have to have an episode on this. Well, actually we should play some of these songs and maybe even get your band on live. Think that's doable?
Michael Bayliss:Well, Nirvana could do unplugged, so why not?
Brian Czech:Yeah, exactly. Well, Michael, we got a number of questions yet, but first, we need to take a short non-commercial break with James Lamont. Take it away, James!
James Lamont:Hello, listeners. We hope you're enjoying our conversation with Michael Bayliss of the Post-Growth Australia Podcast. Like The Steady Stater, PGAP is available on the streaming service Spotify. If you have a Spotify account, we encourage you to locate the shows on the app or the website and click the Follow button. This will help boost The Steady Stater and PGAP on the platform. Both podcasts will benefit and we'll grow the audience for a post-growth steady state economy. And now back to the show!
Brian Czech:Welcome back Steady Staters, we're talking with Michael Bayliss of Sustainable Population Australia. His newly launched website is michaelbayliss.org, a really interesting collection of Michael steady state efforts over the years I heartily recommend it. Now, Michael, you know, there been some protests recently by the group Blockade Australia, that's in Newcastle, where the world's largest coal port is located. And in response, the police minister of New South Wales called these protests, how did he described it... "nothing short of economic vandalism." Meanwhile, the Deputy Prime Minister put it pretty bluntly said, "We've got to make a buck." So these government growth men are dead serious doer. Aren't they pushing for sentences of up to 25 years for these protesters?
Michael Bayliss:It's incredible. I know of Environment Center where a couple of my acquaintances worked and lived nearby and are raided by the police. I believe it was in relation to these protests. You know, I looked up the Blockade a little bit more before the interview. And I see there's a big protest in Sydney next year in May. And if it's possible to transverse around the continent next year, I might go to that. Because you know, I come from the Derrick Jensen School of Thinking, who's a author and a guest on PGAP's second most popular episode. That direct action is really critical. And the system will do everything it can to try to preserve itself to appropriate everything and twist people and things and concepts around -- like you can't even have a community garden in a suburb without raising the land values and gentrifying, you know, the surrounding areas. So you know, late stage capitalism is so good at keeping itself afloat no matter what. I know many commentators like Nicole Foss, Automatic Earth, predicted, you know, there's going to be a financial collapse 10 years ago. There hasn't been -- because, you know, those in charge don't play by the same rules of capitalism that they make the rest of us have to live by. So I think changing the dialogue, which we do at CASSE, which we do at SPA, which I hopefully do on the podcast, as well as direct action, and sometimes very visceral action. Well, you know, direct action done with compassion and love for the natural world and for equality, not just going in protesting for the sake of protests, you know, not just about anything, because there have been some protests against the government. For example, vaccination, blah, blah, blah, that I don't you know, fully agree with. But when it comes to environment, I think we've got to be loud and mean, which I hope I was, to some degree, when I went on the Extinction Rebellion week of actions back in 2019.
Brian Czech:Well, that all resonates with me. One thing about direct action is you never know what's going to happen, and what's going to come out of that. And a lot of times, it's quite surprising. You know, I used to take part in those World Bank demonstrations back around 2000. That was before 9/11. After that, it became a lot harder to do anything like that in the USA, but it's a great way to network and communicate to a very receptive audience, a very organic and organically receptive audience about steady state economics. And I guess I'll mention it here. I ended up getting $15,000 from -- I was arrested with the 867 demonstrators that got cornered by the DC police, and had to spend night, you know, with handcuffs, and hands behind their back. And so somebody started up a class action lawsuit. And that was quite a surprising outcome from that.
Michael Bayliss:You know, it's been just so interesting to see in the last 10 years that people have gone from, you know,"you've got to have economic growth, jobs and growth" to it being now mainstream, that people are saying, "yeah, this system has got to end." We can't keep growing like this. And I'd like to think all of us have played a part into shifting the zeitgeist of this cultural thinking, at least among everyday people, even when the mainstream media, even when our politicians, even when the big business lobbied conspired to stifle this conversation.
Brian Czech:Well put in, it's very encouraging. I hope everybody listens to that and replays it. Well, let's go back to Australia, again, for a while and talk about population, the current population is about 26 million, and the fertility rate is around 1.7 children per woman. So it seems it would be very easy for people in much of the rest of the world, and as well as for Australian growth pushers, to point to those numbers, and the size of the country, and claim that any limits to population growth are way off in the distance. What's your ecological response to that, Michael?
Michael Bayliss:Yeah, well, Australia's population, at least before COVID were growing by the size of a new Canberra every year. Now Canberra is the size of 300,000 people. So what set the size of a new Tallahassee in Florida every year, and that's a lot, you know, our population growth was 1.6%. And that results in a doubling of population, you know, every 30 to 40 years, I think, at that rate of growth. And this growth isn't through fertility. It isn't even through the refugee and asylum seeker humanitarian programs that our government is notorious for scapegoating and villainizing and putting in to offshore detention. It's based around a skilled migration, student migration, economic migration program, that is a population policy designed through narrow economic vested interests, that benefit the few-- at the expense of many. So that is the population policy were fighting against at SPA. It's like hang on, you know, we don't need population growth for the so-called skills shortages and aging demographic crises. So they've all been debugged anyway, by the way. Let's have a lower population growth that does prioritize, you know, climate refugees, war refugees, and to have that as a policy.
Brian Czech:I want to go back to one of your neighbors. We've seen some encouraging behavior. And you alluded to this earlier from the Prime Minister of New Zealand Jacinda Ardern. She's been critical of growth economics and instead promotes the concept of wellbeing without a growing GDP. But Australian Prime Ministers haven't been known at all for that kind of forward thinking. In fact, Australia is sometimes painted as more of a foot-dragger on global heating these days than the USA, which is saying something! Why do you think there seems to be such a difference between neighbors there? Is there some profound cultural or political distinction between the Kiwis and Aussies?
Michael Bayliss:Look, that's a million-dollar question that we're trying to all figure out for ourselves. Look, I think New Zealand has always been a little bit more progressive than Australia. I know that's a bit of a blanket statement. But when you do look at New Zealand's history, it seems to have had much better relationship with the First Nations people than Australia has. Absolutely far from perfect still, colonization playing out in a big way. But it just seems like people from all walks of life can coexist historically a little bit better in New Zealand, and I think that opens up for a better dialogue. Look, I think New Zealand is a smaller country with a smaller population. And I think there might be an aspect when you compare to other places that are doing well on this front like Costa Rica, that's a smaller land area with a smaller population. When you have 25 million people in a large continent in Australia or, even indeed, 350 million people in the USA with one president. It's very -- a lot more difficult to get all opinions and views heard and come to consensus agreements. I think the other problem with Australia is that, most of us well, many of us are mum-and-dad investors. So we're all caught up in the housing and property market to some way. So although I think many of us really don't like the environmental positions, that the major parties, the Liberal and Labour Parties take, that most of us feel compelled to vote for the status quo. Because if they take a risk, they're worried that their -- the value of their houses might go down, which apparently won't be an issue if you vote for the Greens, because they want to build lots more houses. So I don't know what everyone's complaining about. But look, that's just me thinking off the blue, why New Zealand and Australia might be different. New Zealand has managed to have a female head of state with a lot more grace than Australia. So, I really think that, you know, when we had Julie Gilad as our first female head of state and only female head of state in Australia, the shock jockeys on Talkback Radio, were talking about putting her in a bag off to sea and her dad dying of shame. So, you know, Australia has so much that we can learn from New Zealand, I wish we'd just shut up and listen to them to be honest. But that's just me.
Brian Czech:Very insightful. Well, along those lines, and I alluded earlier wanting to come back to the challenge of getting these messages out there to the masses, I guess you'd say. And it's been said that one of the biggest challenges for economic reformists and social movements is translating our ideas into compelling stories -- stories and narratives. And I know you've spoken about this, but it's not easy. It's not like GDP is called Dracula -- well, okay, maybe it is in a way -- but is that the challenge developing metaphors from pre-existing stories? Or do you have some other approach to this storytelling business?
Michael Bayliss:Yeah, I think people are largely guided by stories and easily digestible chunks, and the business community, and the story of Eurocentric colonization has been very good at selling the jobs and growth and myth that we've all been beholden to and the growth is good and the GDP is good and if we keep growing then wealth will trickle down. Let's be very good at maintaining this even when you know the reality has for many of us been a complete opposites. And yes, we do need to have good stories and better stories and compelling stories. And I would have said 10 years ago that my biggest criticism with the Degrowth and Post-Growth and Steady State movements might have been that there are a lot of academic papers, lots of abstracts and lots of, you know, economic modeling that aren't that compelling to most people. And look, that's been an issue with Sustainable Population Australia as well. So you know, and SPA were trying to deliver very clear messaging, you know, let's rethink big Australia inviting people to the table. And a new video series called,"My Bulging City," and one of our videos, "Endless Growth Paradigm," which put, you know, all these concepts into like an animation got over 10,000 views, which by SPA standards is -- means it went viral by anyone else's standards means it did okay. And the podcast PGAP, and dare I say Steady Stater as well, are both part of that. I think people like to hear other people talk. You know, it's part of the big tradition of yarning and storytelling that we've had for most of our history, and I think podcasts is a way to continue that yarning tradition and a fantastic way of selling the post-growth, steady state, degrowth whatever message.
Brian Czech:Absolutely. And along those lines, Michael, it's been a lot of fun talking with you today, and hearing some yarns along the way. And, and I look forward to returning the favor pretty soon on your Post-Growth Podcast too, maybe minus the singing part. But thanks again, Michael, and talk to you soon.
Michael Bayliss:Thank you. It's been an utter pleasure. And thank you for all that you do. You are one of my heroes. And so it's always nice to talk to your hero as well.
Brian Czech:Oh, thanks so much. And folks, that about wraps 'er up. We've been talking with Michael Bayliss, host of the Post-Growth Australia Podcast and the National Communications Manager at Sustainable Population Australia. Michael's experience in everything from podcast production to population advocacy, from music to mining, shows you how you don't need to confine yourself to one field if you want to advance the steady state. In fact, it's likely the variety in Michael's life that has allowed him to join and engender such interesting conversations. I'm Brian Czech, and you've been listening to the Steady Stater podcast. See you next time!