Cheryl, can you please explain to us poor ignorant souls, how we are going to preserve resources while we have an ever increasing population.

Incidentally can you please also point to any posts on the present topic which have specifically advocated a "one child" policy.

David

The dishonesty of "Cheryl" is staggering. That this bloke, with acknowledged financial interests in the real estate trade, should be sanctimonious about "women having a go at them" is nauseating.

Meanwhile, the obsessive P Hume seems unable to conceive of any mode of thought outside the simple binary "government control" versus "free market liberty, hooray!". P Hume seems to be unaware that in democracies, governments are elected. Certainly there's room for improvement in our electoral systems, and in our bureaucracies, but for the most part the Australian systems do a reasonable job of delivering the governments we prefer - and getting rid of them as well. Progress is slow, but real: only the thickest of our pollies are unaware of the debates about climate, population, and biodiversity - for example. And given that the debates are happening, we should take the trouble to feed facts into the system, and attempt to comb out ideological intransigence and market-driven disinformation.

I have no association with the real estate industry.

Lets have a quick look at the least contestable side of the Sustainable People Party and one which all anti-pops are in agreement on - the removal of the Baby Bonus.

King Hazza and the Glove Puppets say that the BB is a defacto inducement for women to have kids.

It is no such thing. It is a payment for those families earning less than $75K to help bring up their kids. The BB is $5,294 or about $200 a week for 26 weeks and then ceases.

It recognises that women won't be able to work and the initial expense in the first year is great, although anyone who has had kids knows that $5K doesn't go far.

So the Glove Puppets say that this payment alone is having Australian families going gangbusters popping out kids? Get real.

When Costello first introduced it, there was a small blip in the pop numbers but it was so miniscule, as to be statistically insignificant.

Are you guys going to launch a political party based on the sort of rhetorical rubbish that you publish here? The public will carve you a new colon.

Cheryl, my apologies, mate. I had you confused with someone else, who shares your views, and is associated with real estate or the building industry.

Cheryl, Ok, you've posted some serious responses to our questions, but have fallen far short of explaining your overall position on population growth - other than to indicate that you're in favour of letting nature take its course. Does this mean you would regard any intervention by our government to manage our population growth as misplaced, illegal, even anti-humanity, or possibly, deluded? Or would you possibly consider any intervention futile? You've already stated you'd consider this "socio-biology writ large" - meaning racist I presume - and anti-capitalist. Isn't this just a little bit disingenuous?

Ok, your point about the baby bonus is well founded, and I think a diminishing majority of the Oz public would support building our Oz population by natural increase. Before you accuse me of racism, my dad migrated to Oz in the 1920's, and I'm not against immigration, just open-slather immigration. We already have a housing shortfall, and a welfare blowout - or are such things inconsequential to you?

You mention 35 million by 2050 - around a 50% increase - and make no opinion as to whether you consider this to be a viable or preferable target, or whether you consider this too little. Do you favour big Oz because of local security concerns, perhaps? Reds under the beds, or some northern peril? Bigger means more secure?

Unmanageable population growth can only mean economic stress and a reduction in living standards. So, do you wish for an equal world perhaps, where all sink to the lowest common denominator?

Urban design? Where does this fit in to your vision for big Oz?

If we are "puppets", just who or what is pulling your strings?

Why are you so hostile?

(PeterH, I'm satisfied you're just rattling a chain - a troublemaker only seeking to disrupt serious discussion. I'm ignoring everything you post from now on.)

When the going gets tough for the Glove Puppets they fall back to their default position which is - the world is finite and a closed system (we're all doomed).

Resources such as iron ore, bauxite and fish are finite. The earth is a dynamic, open system, being blasted by the sun creating photosynthesis and the moon which drags tides across the face of the earth. Everything that grows on earth is part of an open system. Keep that in mind, the earth is part of a great open system.

So in answer to the question - what are we going to do when we run out of copper, iron ore and zinc? We're going to die ... Although to believe that one would have to subscribe to an infantile set of assumptions such as history is linear and unchanging, imagination and technology are our enemies, capitalism is inflexible, science is static, etc.

The anti-pops decry the the numbers of people on the earth, although every single person has different consumption needs. They say a man in Mumbai lives the 'consumption life' of a man in Sydney. Utter rubbish. Their concepts of cross cultural economics and quantification are puerile and delinquent.

Their assessments are based on 'feelings, nothing more than feelings' as Barbara Streisland sang