stevenlmeyer,

".....Canada's Athabasca Oil Sands is economically viable"...but not environmentally viable.

"We are not going to run out of oil for a while yet."

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2009/03/canadian-oil-sands/essick-photography.

Oh goody!

Divergence,
“The ABS didn't specify what share of the natural increase was due to births to recent immigrants”

Yes.

We are now subsidising abortions up to about 90,000 per year, and also subsidising contraceptives, and it is estimated that up to 25% of adult men in Australia have had a vasectomy.

Why do we have to go through all this if the government keeps bringing in more and more immigrants, and then does not keep records of how many children they are having.

That was the big mistake made in a number of European countries, until eventually, the local population became strangers in their own country.

That was the big mistake made in a number of European countries, until eventually, the local population became strangers in their own country.
Vanna,
And guess what I & others copped flak for saying that all along ?

Fiji is a shining example of Democracy at work. Australia is definitely in the firing line now.

I agree with the general tenet of Jenny’s article.

But immigration is of far more concern than fertility rate, in our country.

I see no point at all in pushing for a fertility rate that would be lower than the one we had before the baby bonus artificially boosted it. All we need to do is get rid of that despicable baby-buying bribe, and the national fertility rate will return to a level respectably a little bit below replacement level.

Everyone should then be free to have as many kids as they want, because most will choose to have two, one or none. The occasional larger family should not be of concern, for as long as the national fertility rate remains at or below replacement level.

Immigration should be reduced to about net zero. This is the big factor.

Of course, once you start talking about the rest of the world, the approach needs to be very different.

Neither entirely rational nor particularly accurate, Pericles asserts that Ms Goldie's article is "a classic case of do-as-I-say not do-as-I-do".

Repeating an assertion does not make it correct, if it was wrong the first time. Pericles again claims that it is hypocritical for someone in comfortable circumstances to express a view about social policy.

This is of course nonsense in itself, but neither does Pericles have any evidence about the particular situation of the writer, and in order to score his patronising debating point, he ignores what little information Ms Goldie provides. The writer quite clearly describes the actions that she herself took (one biological child, several adoptions, long-term fostering.)

Pericles is also (wilfully?) inaccurate in his use of the emotive term "one child policy", which Ms Goldie specifically rejects. She says: "I believe that a fertility rate of 1.5 is not unreasonable ..."

Clearly, Ms Goldie has not only thought about the issue, but she has also acted on her charitable principles. A case of "do-as-I-do".