It is with relief that I see this article goes to the heart of Gary John's mischief. Eugenics.
It's not as if it hasn't been tried before. Nazi Germany had a well documented eugenics program which led to the Holocaust.
Margaret Sanger and her eugenics-oriented Planned Parenthood organization had a “Negro Project” in black Harlem in the 1930's which was trying to develop ways to eliminate the black population.
One very pertinent reason to support children, and then care for them, is that without population growth, the human race is facing an erosion of its base. The end of that will be the dying out of our species.
http://journal-neo.org/2015/01/01/world-overpopulation-hold-on-buddy

As an educator the author fails totally. If you wish to bring indigenous women into this debate you need to firstly learn what happened to unwanted children prior to white settlement.
They were killed! Infanticide was a common practise, widely documented and recognised even as recently as 30 years ago. In fact only 15 years ago I nursed a baby in Darwin who had been rejected multiple times by not only her mother, but the whole community, and put out to die.
Indigenous groups didn't raise children as a community unless times were extremely good, food wise, and even then certain children,like wrong skin babies or one of twins, were automatically put out to die.
It was recognised that a woman couldn't breastfeed two children successfully, so if she gave birth whilst breast feeding a toddler the new baby was killed.
In times of famine babies were killed simply because the women couldn't produce enough breast milk to sustain them whilst on starvation rations. This wasn't considered eugenics, it was simply a practical tactic to prevent women having to raise children who would otherwise starve to death and put pressure on the tribal economy,
Having your children supported by strangers is a totally foreign concept in indigenous life, as in every other culture until recently. My parents and grandparents had to support their own children, as did everyone else at that time. That is why birth control was hailed as such an immense benefit to families. No longer did they have to produce children they couldn't provide for.
Anyone who can't see the dangers of allowing women to reproduced multiple children they cannot provide for, either financially, physically or emotionally needs to get out more and study the lives of some of these children. These kids break my heart.

There is a eugenics movement in Australia. It's called Sustainable Population Australia, although its had so many name changes, I can never remember if that's correct. They heartily endorse John's article.

Big Nana,
<<Anyone who can't see the dangers of allowing women to reproduced multiple children they cannot provide for, either financially, physically or emotionally needs to get out more and study the lives of some of these children. These kids break my heart.>>

Surely then the solution is to ensure they CAN be provided for?
Reducing the available support, in the hope that it will somehow prevent people having more children, will cause far more harm than good.

Seems like it is difficult to have a discussion on population without being labeled with some pejorative or other.

Hows about we face up to the reality there are too many of us and solutions should be discussed with some maturity instead of.

I would rather see it applied ubiquitously, that is, no tax breaks at all for having children but realise that impacts the child. So not having the child in the first place seems like a better solution.

Big nana,

Thanks for the anthropological history lesson.

However, these people are products of 20th/21st century social dysfunction.

It might be useful to address that as a point of departure.

And still I can't see how such a proposal could be implemented without a huge backward step in our social inclinations...I'm assuming any such proposition would be universal.

Would there be some kind of adjudicator who passes judgement on who should be made to submit to contraception in order to collect the dole?

He or she might classify some women as slags or alcoholics or meth-heads, etc - obviously they would be candidates for contraception?

But what happens, in the case of universal legislation, when an ordinary "upstanding" (white?) family finds the daddy out of work and they find their application for the dole refused unless the female undergoes contraception?

And can you tell me how many years it would take to clear the backlog of children affected by their mother being refused the dole. How would that sort of penury improve the lives of the children in the years between implementing this proposal and successfully stopping poor people from reproducing if they're on welfare?

I do like this:

"Having your children supported by strangers is a totally foreign concept in indigenous life..."

You have got to be joking, if there is one thing indigenous people understand in a traditional setting, it's that the whole community is there to nurture each other...It takes a village to raise a child.

Within an indigenous community, there are no "strangers".

I think the only way Gary John's suggestions could be workable in this day and age with all its informed public is only if the Federal government removed financial incentives & benefits from having too many? or any? children in the first place IF the parents can't afford to raise them to at least a "reasonable" standard of living. As general a statement as that maybe, I think that is the crux of the problem.
We have seen this issue exacerbated after ex treasurer Peter Costello bought in the baby bonus policy back in the Howard administration, this of course has now changed but only after 1 March 2014. This is only one example of how previous Federal government policy encouraged this problem that Gary John's is referring too.
Its too simplistic to brand Gary John's article an exercise in eugenics with its sneaking Nazism creeping in. The whole problem is far more complex than this.
Today, we do have generations of people in breeding age who have this psyche of entitlement from governments that they will pick up a good proportion, if not all of the bill for raising children. This has too change, country can no longer afford this. This also brings up another BIG & highly politically unpalatable issue known as "Taxation" and who pays what and when... another issue for another day.. but nonetheless highly relevant to this article from Gary Johns.
Also,once again, I support the comments of "Big Nana".

I see as usual the "ladies" could not argue against the first topic, it was just so obviously the way to go, they had no argument.

So what did they do, they changed the subject of course, & started arguing about support for the children. It's the usual "won't someone just think of the children".

The whole idea is to stop the slags, as Poirot names them, having continual children, so as to live off the tax payer funded income.

We then get some bleeding heart crying that if the unemployed have to wait until they are earning an income to have children, they might have to wait a lifetime.

Well so they damn well should. What ever gave any woman the right to spend other peoples money, on satisfying her desire to breed. No one should ever be given the right to spend other peoples money in that, or any other way.

There is no doubt we can tell the definite bad mothers to be, why should we not protect ourselves from wasting money on them.

Of course we should support existing children, yes, but by giving them in adoption to decent families. Hell, doing that might even give the kids some chance in life, provided they have nor inherited the mothers mental attitude.

Oh & in passing, just what is an "educator"? Could that be a euphemism for busybody, who wants to enforce their ideas on the rest of us.

Halduell,
Wrong, wrong wrong.
You're wilfully confusing the issue of eugenics with the racial policies of the NSDAP which had nothing to do with their scientific advances in public health and health education.
All developed countries run eugenic programs, vaccination is a eugenic measure, so is medicare and health education in schools.
The NSDAP eugenics program was insignificant in comparison to those in the U.S, France and elsewhere, it's well documented and studied and had nothing whatsoever to do with some fictional "holocaust".
The NSDAP eugenics programs included anti smoking campaigns, research into cancer and venereal disease, outlawing child labor, compulsory physical fitness programs in schools, obstetrics and maternity care and so forth.
The Third Reich also had progressive views on euthanasia and quality of life for the severely disabled, they gave next of kin the option of ending the suffering of severely handicapped people who had no quality of life.
The genetic health courts in the 1930's were set up to regulate the health of "Aryan" Germans and dealt with cases of congenital diseases, hereditary mental health, venereal disease and so forth, they had nothing to do with the deportation of Jews from Germany to Poland for forced labour or internment.

There is a difference between providing welfare for disadvantaged children that already exist and the effort to try and stop such a situation from happening in the future. If something is broken you don’t just throw up your hands and continue handing out money. We have to face the reality that you should not have a right to what you cannot afford. This goes for everything including children.

No one seems to be able to present a case as to why this principle should not apply in relation to children. The glib phrase ‘children are our future’ is meaningless. How can we have possession of a ‘future’? If we are not around to possess it then it is pointless saying that it is ours and if we are talking about a future then by its very definition we cannot possess it. It is a manipulative piece of rhetoric.

Those who want taxpayer assistance for those who choose to have children have to present a good argument for it but we get threats about the slippery slope and reminders about Nazi Germany as if these are logical arguments about the issue at hand. They are attempts to dramatise a situation rather than present cognitive arguments.

The taxpayer investment in supporting children is not a guarantee of value for money. Taxpayer dollars have enabled the development of terrorists, murders, robbers, embezzlers and dictators just as much as anything else. This cannot be sustained as an argument for child support.

There is no imposition upon us to continue the human race (and how many people seriously decide to bring a child into the world for that reason). We are free to do how we please with the resources we have and if we choose to squander them all on ourselves then that is our right. We cannot ‘owe’ anything to a ‘future generation’. How do we know that such an entity will exist?

We have to make decisions based on what is just for humanity now and child welfare funded by the taxpayer is not just now nor will it ever be.

Ah Poirot, a littlec learning .....

You write, perhaps in too much of a hurry:

"I do like this:

"Having your children supported by strangers is a totally foreign concept in indigenous life..."

You have got to be joking, if there is one thing indigenous people understand in a traditional setting, it's that the whole community is there to nurture each other...It takes a village to raise a child.

Within an indigenous community, there are no "strangers"."

That was Big Nana's point, to the extent that you accurately understood it. Which you didn't - the 'whole community' in any Aboriginal setting, is a complex of inter-related, and sometimes hostile, families. Families support children (to the extent that they actually do), not communities.

The vacuous slogan would be closer to reality if it declared, " .... it takes a family to raise a child."

But of course, even if that were true as it stands, that says little that is remarkable. In fact, one could add, " .... it takes a functioning family to raise a child."

Having seen mothers stuffing themselves with chicken while kids wailed for a bit, and one mother making herself chops for breakfast, ignoring her kids, and taking the chops back to bed, and kids looking in bins for scraps, or straggling the streets at winter dusk, trying to find where the mother is, sometimes I wonder if a functioning Aboriginal family is mostly just a hypothetical construct.

It takes a dysfunctional family, a self-absorbed mother, a useless, abusive and/or usually absent father, to destroy a child.

But would that they had resilience, as Craig brightly suggests. Yes, indeed. But the journey between infant neglect and jail is much shorter and more certain than the "How green was my valley" road via some edifying experience or dedicated educator who can inspire someone to be resilient for life. Oh, would that it were not so.

Joe

Big Nana and Valley Guy, you are to be commended for your comments. And it isn't just the Aboriginals who would come under it's ambit. We have too many unwanted children being brought up in undesirable circumstances, but as soon as someone with some gumption makes a practical suggestion about improving things, they get called names and derided. We already have too many people on this earth, so what is wrong with ensuring that those who are born are the best that we can produce. We have already passed the peak of our genetic potential, thanks to the intervention of modern medicine.
People such as Gary John should be applauded for doing the country a favour, instead of being derided by those who have no thought for the future of humanity.

David

It is wrong to cut off support to children that were already conceived on the promise of welfare (that includes the abolishing of Family Tax benefit B when a child turns six).

It is wrong to force the use of contraception.

But it is also wrong for some to be forced to finance the hobbies of others. Yes, satisfying the urges of one's genes to reproduce is a hobby!

It's long since children were needed - the world is overcrowded and if Australia needs young working hands, then all it needs is to open its gates a bit more and accept as many grateful immigrants as it likes, even saving the burden of education.

So while past promises need to be kept, no such promises should be given for those not yet conceived. There should be phasing out of all child support, including welfare, child-care, schooling and healthcare.

It is wrong to force others to understand that children are no longer a good thing, but if they interact with the system desiring something from it, be it welfare or government employment and contracts, etc., that could be a good time to explain it to them and present them with a contract. The contract should state that the benefit they seek is conditional on not having new babies and if broken, then they accept an appropriate punishment. Obviously it's the parents who should be punished for breaking their contract, not the children. How people keep their contract is up to them - whether they use contraceptives, abstinence, abortion, sterilisation or whatever, is solely their own business. What could that punishment be is open for discussion, but note that as the contract is consensual, it could include things that are otherwise unacceptable such as corporal punishment or expulsion to a third-world country.

halduall; "without population growth, the human race is facing an erosion of its base. The end of that will be the dying out of our species"

Sadly you have it completely reversed. If the world continues increasing the population at the present rate, which is the main cause of global warming, then the species will die out. It will take most other species with it.
I cannot see an end to overpopulation, it would be impossible for woman to stop having children in the amounts they are managing at the moment.
Even the Chinese one child law has not decreased their population sufficiently to solve their problem of commodity depletion and pollution.
Here in this thread no one has brought this up but rather strew the thread with red herrings about eugenics and nazification, totally ignoring the real problem
About five million children die every year from malnutrition and lack of clean water but it does not stop the galloping African birth rate.

@Poirot, thanks Joe, that was my point exactly. Within a community there were no strangers, but members of neighbouring tribes would never provide food for children of their rivals.
As for the suggestion that we provide more support for these children, well, that could be done financially, at even more expense to taxpayers,but who will provide the physical and emotional support these kids desperately need? Are we to supply live in nannies for these kids? Round the clock counsellors?
Like Joe I have seen mothers shovel food in their mouths whilst children cry in hunger, with arms outstretched, reaching for the food. Simply giving more money to these women doesn't solve the problem. What is needed is less children.
I very much doubt Gary Johns believes contraception should be compulsorily forced upon people, more that we need to stop providing incentives for women to constantly bear children unnecessarily.

Big Nana,
Living in inner Melbourne I've seen two mothers injecting heroin in a laneway as their toddlers sat squalling in their strollers, another overdosed and unconscious in the front seat of a car with two little girls in the back. When I lived in Bendigo a junkie who lived next door left her infant son strapped in his stroller in the blazing sun for three hours while she went to score, he nearly died but she got him back when he was released from hospital. Soon after I came home one night and my girlfriend was curled up on the couch with the same little boy asleep in her arms, the mother had asked if she could babysit for half an hour but she didn't come back for a week.
The absolute topper was one day in Smith St Collingwood when a wild eyed, filthy little girl about three years old scooted past me and under one of those A-frame footpath signs the shops put out, her junkie mother, instead of reaching in to grab her out or lifting up the sign started kicking the little mite and screaming obscenities at her. There were hundreds of people about and nobody did anything, the girl I was walking with managed to yell out "Hey!" but by then the child was being dragged across the road and away.
All of those incidents concerned White people,in all honesty I've never personally seen Aboriginal kids as neglected and abused as those examples, of course I believe they exist but the problems are just as bad among Whites.

Those people should be brought before a "Genetics court" and be examined by a panel of experts, if they're unfit to reproduce the humane thing to do would be to sterilise them, stuff the economic arguments, it's just the morally right thing to do.

Yes, Gary John's article is about eugenics.
And yes, the world is facing a population implosion. Europe is already well below a sustainable replacement birth rate.
On another note, if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck maybe it's a Scott Morrison. Could this be the opening salvo in a "stop the babies" campaign to go with his recent "stop the boats" campaign?

Malcolm King,

Nice attempt to derail this thread, which has nothing to do with Sustainable Population Australia, and is discussing a truly serious social problem, judging from the comments by Big Nana, Loudmouth, and Jay of Melbourne, even if Gary John's answer isn't the right one.

<There is a eugenics movement in Australia. It's called Sustainable Population Australia (SPA), although its had so many name changes, I can never remember if that's correct. They heartily endorse John's article.>

Lies. SPA has nothing to say about eugenics and no eugenic policies. It opposes racial discrimination in immigration. Anyone who is interested can look at its website and see that its concerns relate to the environment and the well-being of the existing population.

http://www.population.org.au/about

SPA has always rejected coercion in family planning, so could not support Gary John's proposals and had never endorsed them. Taking away pronatalist incentives such as the Baby Bonus is one thing, but threatening people with starvation really is coercive.

You are cleverly exploiting a loophole in the defamation laws, so that you can get away with defaming organisations provided that you avoid talking about named individuals. Here are the people running SPA

http://www.population.org.au/about/people

Go ahead and accuse them by name of running a eugenicist organization or promoting coercive family planning. I dare you.

'five million children die every year from malnutrition and lack of clean water but it does not stop the galloping African birth rate. '

also Robert does not stop the gross obesity in the Western culture where people eat themselves sick and then dump tonnes of perfectly good food in the sea.

Robert LePage, I suggest you watch Don't Panic: The Truth About Population
http://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/video/368800835692/Don'tPanic:TheTruthAboutPopulation
(warning: the link will expire in a couple of days)

_________________________________________________________________________

Big Nana,
<<As for the suggestion that we provide more support for these children, well, that could be done financially, at even more expense to taxpayers,but who will provide the physical and emotional support these kids desperately need? Are we to supply live in nannies for these kids? Round the clock counsellors?>>
Have you ever seen the TV show Supernanny? That's the kind of thing that's needed: someone to live with them for a short while to train the parents how to raise kids. AIUI this is already done in a few cases, but it needs to be done in many more.

@ Jay. I wasn't specifically just referring to indigenous kids. It's not a racial issue, it's an extreme poverty, multigenerational, dysfunctional cycle that is being enabled by welfare. The only way to break the cycle is reduce the number of children these dysfunctional homes produce so that the parents can focus their limited resources on fewer offspring. Most women could cope with one or two children, with a little support, even from a background of poverty. Increase that to five, six, seven or more children and the task becomes impossible, even for the most motivated parent on welfare. And that's leaving out the danger to the children with every new stepfather.
As a nation we cannot afford to keep supporting personal lifestyle choices, of which parenthood is one, especially with the increased aging population we are needing to support now.

Having just browsed this and the ‘No contraception, no dole’ thread, this whole issue appears to present a perfect storm of right-wing obsession:

1. Control of women’s bodies – and, hence, their lives
2. An abiding and deep-rooted resentment of the welfare system by those who can most afford to fund it
3. Upper-class fear of retribution by the exploited, unwashed masses.

This so-called debate about a supposedly 'serious social concern' is really just another episode in the ongoing propaganda war against those who are not white, male, able-bodied, rich and privileged. If such an unwieldy and expensive welfare-contraceptive system were ever implemented, it's not going to stop the supposed scum of female humanity from reproducing itself, but it might serve to enhance an already overblown sense of self-righteousness among the privileged.

Hahahaha Killarny, you couldn't have missed by more had you tried. I'm an old female pensioner with 28 aboriginal descendants. The only demographic I fit is that I'm white but I've been living with blacks in remote areas so long I don't think my colour counts any more. Epic fail! Hahaha

Killarney,
Ha! Typical Feminist paranoia! Control over women's bodies and reproduction is an obsession of the Left and it's really only non White,socialist countries like China, India and Vietnam who forcibly sterilise healthy women or do it without their knowledge.
There are "useless mouths" in every society, there are lives not worth living and people not worthy of state support, in the Third world their lives are usually mercifully short, in the developed world such people are kept alive purely for political reasons.
Killarney six months of crystal meth use can destroy a person's mind and body and render them a "useless mouth" even if they kick the habit, should a person whose brain and internal organs are so damaged be allowed to have children? How do you stop them having kids they can't and won't care for?

Some of these comments are very disturbing and most do not really address the points made in the article.

I think it's quite reasonable to be concerned that there may be some kind of incentive for women, whether poor or not, to be having children outside of a stable marriage. This is never good for the children and public policy should always favour the natural family unit of mother, father and their children.

But when it comes to discriminating against families where there is unemployment, I am aghast, mostly because the gov't and our society have not taken the trouble to ensure that all families have adequate opportunities to work. When there is an unemployment rate above 0% then obviously some unfortunate people will be out of work and it is not their fault. The assistance they need should certainly not depend upon the use of contraception.

As the writer says, children are the future of our society and that is why all families should receive any support and assistance they need during times of duress. All families should do all they can to help themselves, but a society which will not support the weak and vulnerable deserves to be left in the dust bin of history.

Big nana

I've no idea what you are talking about. But I'm glad I gave you a good laugh.

Jay

‘Control over women's bodies and reproduction is an obsession of the Left’

No. The main reproductive concern of the left is that WOMEN have control over their OWN bodies. Your pithy and dubious examples of China etc pale in comparison to the extensive Western/Christian history of preventing women from accessing and using birth control at all.

‘there are lives not worth living and people not worthy of state support’

Typical social Darwinism, which has always found its home on the right of politics, as it’s definitely not welcome on the left. (And stop confusing the totalitarian communist regimes of the former Soviet Union and Mao's China with left-wing socialism. They occupy separate universes.)

‘How do you stop them having kids they can't and won't care for?’

I’m not totally opposed to having the state intervene to rule that a woman be sterilised in very extreme cases. Similar arguments are given for serial sex offenders to be medically ‘castrated’. This is something for the legislators and professionals to decide, not you or me.

What I’m TOTALLY against is using the welfare system as a weapon of social engineering in general, and contraception of undesirables in particular. Welfare is first and foremost a protective safety net for anyone in our society who falls on hard times. It should never be used for making political statements – even though, sadly, that rule has been getting ripped to shreds since circa 1980.

Malcolm paddy king, AKA Cheryl, is a constant troll.
So most would treat his posts with the contempt they deserve.

Runner I totally agree. But the run of the mill sheeple are not concerned as long as they have their macmansion and the obligatory fleet of gigantic TV's, at least two cars and all the other trappings of "modern" living.

Killarney,
Socialism and Darwinism go hand in hand, since when has the right accepted Darwin's theories?

Killarney, I think your point about women having control over their reproductive choices is a good one, the question is how that might inform social policies. For example, part of the argument in the piece to which this one is a response is that there is a perverse incentive for some women to choose not to exercise control over fertility created by the various well-intended welfare policies. While I don't like that article for many reasons, that point is a very valid one.

Do you have any suggestions about how to address that problem, so that when women make a choice to reproduce or otherwise it is a genuinely free one?

In earlier times fertility was largely a male responsibility, since female contraception was not generally effective. It can't be forgotten that the Pill has only been with us for 50 years

http://cwhgs.unimelb.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0005/628385/Take_Away_Booklet.pdf

and other female contraception methods like diaphragms have significant drawbacks, not least poor reliability and intrusiveness.

{continued}

While there have always been scoundrels and opportunists of both sexes, it was a broad social norm that if a man did get a woman pregnant (or a woman got a man to impregnate her), it created for him a responsibility to support her and the child, usually by marriage, although not always, which could be either his or her decision and sometimes both. The woman, took on an obligation as well, which was to care for the child and her husband in return for that support. A shotgun wedding was not always a bad start to marriage, either.

My eldest (half) sister was born at the altar, so to speak, if I read the records right (it's never been overtly discussed) and he and his first wife went on to have 5 more in a long and by all accounts happy marriage that ended due to her becoming seriously ill due to the consequences of diabetes before the invention of insulin, although he stayed faithful to her during a lengthy period of hospitalisation at the Peat Island asylum as it was then.

He divorced and remarried, to my mother, only after several years and I know he always felt a little guilty that he had abandoned his obligation, but she would have been quite seriously mentally ill by that time.

Do you think it is possible to create such an ethic of responsibility today?

The enforcement of a financial obligation via the child support laws seems a pretty poor substitute and is potentially a part of that perverse incentive discussed above, as well as creating other perverse incentives that have been widely discussed elsewhere and don't need to be canvassed here.

How could we do it better? As a woman who is obviously both well informed and very interested, I think your ideas would be valuable.

Dear Robert TerreBlanch,

Thank you for your incisive comments about this article. I'm not the one hiding under the bridge. In fact, I'm a regular writer for OLO, so I'm 'out' where as your thinking, well, I don't know because you haven't written anything.

Most people think the John's article is a prank or similar rhyme and helps explain why, along with Kelvin Thompson, the ALP committed suicide in government.

"I need your ideas! SPA has obtained around $5K to fund a project in Australia with the aim of reducing unwanted pregnancies. Ideally the idea would achieve this goal and also raise awareness of the population issue. Please let me know any ideas you may have and I will present them to the next SPA Brisbane meeting mid July." SPA Facebook page June 2014.

That's from a Queensland SPA member. .... no drama there until we hot 'and also raise awareness of the population issue'

I'll leave you and Divergence alone to work out how you'll carve up Poland.

Hear hear Big Nana!
Thank heaven someone is prepared to tell it like it is, rather than dress it up with fanatical/parochial victimization; or start singing, they took the children away. (same diff)

Maybe so, but just how many of those patently rescued children, were already rejected by their own communities, and for being the WRONG COLOR; or unusually bright or questioning!?

And how many of them, even today, see no other way out than suicide?
Ever see the truly shocking statistics of youth suicide in indigenous communities and wonder why?
Perhaps we should have kept taking the children away?

Even today, most communities (community sport) endlessly bully kids/make their little lives a perpetual living hell! (violence as entertainment) Who unfortunately don't have a dad around to protect them!
Or just a sober one capable of actually getting up off of the lard ass.

And for who more kids just equates to a larger government handout or more drinking money, for him and his eternally complaining and blame shifting drinking buddies?

Go you good thing Big Nana, we need more community members and elders, with the rare courage to speak up and expose the miscreants and their myths and or mischief for what it really is?

Rather than endlessly cover it up or excuse/minimize it, as being too culturally sensitive to expose for the rank bastardy/buggery/humbug it really is!
Rhrosty.

Quite a few interesting comments, with the usual off the-mark and ad hominem contributions.

But my friend Gary might be onto something: that the incidence of neglected children rises dramatically:

* if their mothers are single or deserted,

* if their mothers are addicted to alcohol or drugs, and

* if they are born later in a stream of neglected children.

Remember that the more children a single mother has, the more disposable income she can enjoy, and the longer she can enjoy it: 'don't worry too much about the kids' needs, kids are property afterall, not responsibilities, she can do whatever she likes withthem.'

So how about this:

(1) if a single mother applies for welfare payments, and presumably for a constant stream of many years' welfare payments, then - for the duration of those payments - she agrees to have a contraceptive implant. If she removes it, and gets pregnant again, she is committing an offence, and on its birth, the child is given up for adoption - she should sign statements to that effect when she initiates the welfare payments.

In other words, while she is reliant on the public purse, she will have no more than the one child. Also, any charges of drunkenness or drug use will be taken extremely seriously, as evidence of incapability to parent, with disastrous consequences to her payments.

(2) she is given free child care for that first child, from three years old to primary school; and

(3) once the child is in pre-school, she is required to undertake vocational education in a genuine course that actually will get her somewhere, ideally one which is identified as leading straight to a job.

In short, since it is impossible to identify fathers, the burden falls on the single mother, to do the best for her child by training for reasonably certain employment, and by thus providing a role-model of work, self-reliance and positivity.

Of course, once she is off welfare, she can have, and support, as many children as she likes.

A bit rough ? Just putting it out there.

Joe

Loudmouth,

Someone on this thread or the previous one on this topic suggested dealing with the problem by giving the mother a government or government subsidized minimum wage job rather than the dole, as well as childcare for the children while she works. Your idea of a full-time course leading to a job is another possibility. I would give the new mother perhaps six months off first for breastfeeding and recovery from the birth. She could be offered free contraception with the failure rates of the different methods explained, but not forced to use it. If she has still more children, then she can be offered more hours of work. More children just mean more work. The childcare centre or family daycare mother could be keeping an eye on the welfare of the children as well. Yes, this would cost more initially, but could end up saving money if it encouraged responsible parenthood. This also answers the objection from Belloc's Daughter about couples who want to work and support their children, but can't find a job in the present economy.

Like Killarney, I don't have a problem with court ordered sterilization in cases of extreme neglect or abuse. People who have abused animals are often banned from keeping them. Why aren't children equally deserving of protection?

Malcolm,

You must have overlooked the words "unwanted pregnancies" in your supposedly damaging quote. I am amazed that someone in this day and age would come out in favour of forced pregnancy or compulsory fatherhood.

Unfortunately I don't think any programs that require more than minimum cooperation from the parents has much chance of success as it will be difficult to enforce. Up here we can't even get a high percentage school attendance from these multigenerational welfare homes, , let alone anything more complex.
But do something we must. The Kimberley has the highest youth suicide rate in the world, all kids from dysfunctional homes. Foetal alcohol Syndrome is at epidemic proportions in some sectors of the community. Child abuse figures increase every year. Some parents are so detached from their kids they have to be drug tested before they can have even a supervised visit with them.
Part of the problem is the refusal of males to take any responsibility for the support of children they produce. For those on welfare, even if they are named as the father, only $10/ fortnight gets taken from their Centrelink money. Perhaps the government needs to enforce more responsibility onto these men. It they lose $50/pay or even more, for every child, they may think twice about trying to impregnate every female they have sex with.
Combined with removal of some of the incentives given for every child, that may, just may, have some effect.

Control of women's bodies is, and always has been an obsession of patriarchal cultures including that of the Jews as described in the "Old" Testament - the punishment for any transgressions was execution.

The countless thousands of women that were murdered during the European "witch"-burning psychosis was another in-your-face example of such control. Much of the hysteria was justified by the book The Hammer of Witches written by two "catholic" priests.

And of course the "catholic" church always has been, and is now in the business of controlling women's bodies and sexuality. Which of course is the illogical extension of their totally irrational opposition to women being priests.
This is now being dramatized via their hysterical opposition to birth control, which some/most of the usual right-wing zealots equating birth-control with murder.
Unfortunately in the USA this malignant attitude has now also been taken up with fervent zeal by right-wing protestant "evangelicals". Even to the degree that via the now extremely right-wing REPUGNANT party they are systematically introducing legislation in many States to outlaw all forms of contraception. And even laws which make mandatory invasive examination of the bodies of women who (for whatever reason) are seeking to have an abortion.
They are of course also ideologically opposed to the dissemination of any form of birth-control and even sex-education. As such one of their primary agendas is the total shut-down of Planned Parenthood and similar essentially feminist inspired organizations that provide comprehensive information and education on the ins-and-outs of female reproductive plumbing.

Such people were of course also hysterically opposed to the original ground-breaking 1970 FEMINIST book Our Bodies Our Selves.

Daffy Duck,

I'm not sure what on earth your post had to do with anything. Daffy by name .....

Big Nana has had vastly more experience that I have but I do recall one family in the settlement where we lived, an often-absent father, a casual mother and seven kids, all born after 1962. Of those the two daughters both had their first kid at fifteen; of the five boys, I think four are dead, and maybe the fifth as well. And maybe at least one of the daughters as well - after all, she would be 47 by now which is pretty old in the welfare population.

I remember the mother - who had passed foster care of at least one kid over to a niece - happy as a lark, pushing a pram around the streets with a flagon in it, sitting there comfortably like a baby would, while her niece wiped her baby's arse and boiled her bottle. Halcyon days !

Joe

Daffy Duck, the patriarchy is a conspiracy theory, women's rights under law have existed since the 12th century in our society, in the U.S the death penalty for rape was only abolished in the 1970's and men as a group have never sought control over women's bodies and anyone who tried as an individual was punished, harshly.
What's clear is that most of us would discriminate against some women having control over their bodies, not all women, people who behave themselves would have nothing to worry about.

@halduell Good article that explains well the background of the population and anti-immigration movement including Paul Ehrlich. Ehrlich is not a demographer and according to demographers in the USA he misinterpreted population growth as being due to increased fertility, when in fact it's about improved standards of living and longevity (youth populations will be about the same at end of the century as today, 2 billion, @runner SBS doc I assume is Rosling who actually is an expert).

However, the article fails to mention the fulcrum of the movement John Tanton http://tinyurl.com/2e9pfr4 (who originally was in Planned Parenthood), an old collaborator of Ehrlich's, often the Scaife Foundation or Colcom, supports his network of organisations. Tanton also has a 'journal' The Social Contract Press TSCP http://tinyurl.com/q6xsbuy What a surprise! Mark O'Connor of SPA has contributed to TSCP as have Bob Birrell, Katherine Betts and various other Australians (who've had their names redacted).

In addition to Australian contributors to TSCP, much of our ugly politics/media have been influenced by same white nativist sympathies (Tanton was an admirer of the white Australia policy) from the USA via neo cons trying to scare the hell out of everyone ...... and split the Democrats.... like Tanton's FAIR Federation for American Immigration Reform, who opposed any immigration reform by both Democrats and GOP...

Craig Minns

‘How could we do it better?’

I don’t see much wrong with introducing a blanket Centrelink policy that caps welfare benefits at three children. This would mean that any male or female, who has more than three children born TO ANY PARTNER, receives benefits for three children only.

It may be a very mild version of ‘social engineering’, but it would be inexpensive to administer and nowhere near as personally invasive as ‘no contraception, no benefit’. Neither is it as draconian as cutting a woman's benefits altogether, simply for being an undesirable mother.

Jay

‘Socialism and Darwinism go hand in hand, since when has the right accepted Darwin's theories’

Socialism is not at all Darwinian and Darwinism is not the same as the Theory of Evolution – which is what much of the fundamentalist Christian Right rejects. The ideology that took Darwin’s name (without his approval) is based on ‘survival of the fittest’ – a term that Darwin didn’t use.

Darwinism should really be called ‘Spencerism’, because ‘survival of the fittest’ was a misinterpretation of Darwin’s Theory of Natural Selection by the ultra-right wing philosopher, Herbert Spencer. Very much a product of the British imperial hubris of his times, Spencer had a nasty habit of categorising humanity into hierarchies of worthiness and putting people most like himself at the top (as do many right-wing OLO commenters today).

HAS ANYONE BOTHERED TO ASK THEMSELVES THE FOLLOWING

- IF our nation finds itself with a problem of too many unemployed people/families; insufficient ‘dole’ thus issue of ‘how to reduce dole incentives’ arises such as ‘No Contraception, No Dole’ etc.
- WHY have we had over the last 40 years and still continuing now, a migration program of such massive proportions that Australia’s population has ties itself by 5 or more over those 4 decades, considering we seem to have an issue with over-population of the welfare check recipiets?
In simple terms: WHY DID WE NEED TO INCREASE OUR WORKER/CONSUMER POPULACE OVER 4 DECADES FROM 5 MILLION TO OVER 20 MILLION TODAY IF WE KNEW WE WOULD NOT HAVE THE JOBS TO SUPPORT THOSE 15 MILLION EXTRA PEOPLE [DID NOT NEED TO BRING] TODAY LIKE CURRECT SITUATION SUPPORTS? IN FACT CONSIDERING THAT A LARGE SECTION OF THOSE WHO MIGRATE HERE END UP AT SOME TIME RELYING UPON THE WELFARE INSTITUTIONS LIKE DOLE OR AUSTUDY ETC. AND A FEW NOTABLE ETHNIC COMMUNITIES EVEN HAVE A COMMONLY RECONGIZED ISSUE WITH LARGE [70% OR MORE] PROPORTIONS OF THEIR COMMUNITY BEING ON WELFARE.

- I wonder if even the most fervent Nozickian type libertarians [i.e. every individual for themselves against every other in total war – true Hobbsean jungle chaos] would have the guts to dare to treat all groups involved with high percentages of dole recipients, from lower-class Anglos to poorer any ethnic group especially Lebanese Muslims, Vietnamese, Sudanese as well as the Indigenous Aussies whom number about 2% of our nation of which 80-90% of them are on welfare
HuH

Hi Matthew,

Where to start ? I have a feeling you can't get to Dublin from here. But let's see.

Over the past forty years, Australia's population has grown, not from five, but probably fifteen million, to twenty two million. Much of that has been due to migration of young people. BUT I would wager that those migrants have had, on the whole, a better employment record that the Anglos who were here before them.

In other words, it's not as if migrants have massively boosted the unemployment rate. That may be a home-grown phenomenon.

Back to topic: Gary Johns' proposal about single mothers , welfare benefits, contraception and conspiracy theories:

I love conspiracy theories - in fact, there should be board games (Christ, I'm old-fashioned !) which reward the most outlandish of them. [Now, why would I want people to do that ? Hmmmmmm ... ]

For example, how do we know that most of the world's problems and financial difficulties are not planned and controlled by a secret group of ex-Catholic Swedish financiers (suppressed by the Lutherans for 400 years) living deep underground in a secret city in Costa Rica ? Who would think it possible ? Therefore, it may be so ! No evidence whatever ? Yes, indeed ! Such clever b@stards !

And I'm sure that, in bits an pieces, somebody could finds evidence of such activity, and the dire effects it is about to have on the world. Go for it, Arjay !

Joe

Loudmouth,

It is easy to mock Matthew, but you might take a look at this paper by Prof. Bob Birrell, a demographer at Monash University

C=http://artsonline.monash.edu.au/cpur/files/2013/02/Immigration_review__Feb-2013.pdf

"The update examines the latest information on the number of recently-arrived migrants who have found employment in Australia, including 2011 Census data which was not available at the time of the publication of Immigration Overshoot.

"The main finding is that the number of migrants arriving in Australia since the beginning of 2011 who found jobs is equivalent to the total number of new jobs created in Australia over the same period. This has had a harmful impact on the level of employment, participation in the labour market and the working conditions of other Australians, particularly young people."

It is easy to understand that a population can grow faster than the ability of the economy to create jobs. Why would you go to the trouble to train a young Australian school leaver, when you can get a prime age migrant who has already been trained at someone else's expense? Furthermore, the migrant is more likely to be under your thumb because he wants you to sponsor him for permanent residence or isn't eligible for welfare. There have been a number of studies around the world, including our own 2006 Productivity Commission report on immigration that show wage depression, i.e., an overstocked labour market.

In any case, this thread is really about how government welfare policies may be contributing to social dysfunction. It really has nothing to do with immigration or population, except insofar as depressed wages are a disincentive to choosing work rather than welfare. Our own fertility rate has been slightly below replacement level since 1976. Any big welfare families are balanced by all those people who don't have children or only have one.

Hi Divergence,

" .... the number of migrants arriving in Australia since the beginning of 2011 who found jobs is equivalent to the total number of new jobs created in Australia over the same period."

Are you saying (or Birrell is) that immigration did not either increase or decrease unemployment levels in the period 2011-2013 ?

And that the unemployment rate, and economic participation rate, of Australians remained static in that period, in spite of 'churn' ?

And does "new jobs created" mean jobs that never existed before, or simply jobs that fell vacant ?

Joe

Here's what one of the authors of the Productivity Commission said of Divergence's racist assertions that migrants aren't worth an Aussie.

"Thank you for your reply. I am not au faut on blogs but they are interesting, although I fear too time consuming. I actually worked on the 2010 PC report or rather, had some input. The terms of reference were fairly narrow and vague.

We were not trying to determine whether migrants added economic value. We know from baseline studies both here and in the US that educated migrants add value to national productivity. What we don't know is how much. It could be slender as you assert. The idea was not to use the report as a stick. It's simply a case that we can't measure some aspects of behavioural life or, in an instrumentalist way, wrap a ruler around a person's economic worth. I believe neither of us would want that anyway.

There is no plan by either of the major parties to add more people to increase the tax base to support an ageing population. That has been modelled and would not work. It's too late. The push now is to ensure older workers stay in work a little longer and save. Even so, there will be considerable draw downs on the health and pension budgets...

I would counsel you to be a little circumspect about using government reports in a wholly instrumental way, or rather, 'picking the eyes out of them' for political ends. The reason is that these reports reflect a specific type of methodology and broad brush interpretations are not always wise or accurate.

You would know about the 12/16 rule and that approx 70 per cent of temp migrants and almost all holiday makers exit Australia. It's worth looking at the exits and most especially Australian 'permanent' exits." Posted by Ivannotsoterrible, Monday, 2 September 2013 11:51:09 AM

What you’re seeing with articles promoting eugenics and slashing population is the re-emergence of sociobiology in Australian life. For them, only the strongest, whitest and fittest survive in their post apocalyptic fantasy world.

https://www.greenleft.org.au/node/54774

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=8838

Since you are determined to hijack the thread...

Loudmouth,

Just go to the link. The number of jobs in the economy is growing, but the number of new jobseekers is growing even faster.

"If the incumbent workforce is growing by around 100,000 per year, but there has been no increase in the number of incumbents in jobs, then this must mean that some aspiring new entrants are missing out on employment, some who were in jobs are now unemployed and some have dropped out of the labour force, either because they were retrenched, have retired early or are discouraged by the difficulty of obtaining employment. It could also be that they are discouraged because
competition for available jobs means that the pay and conditions available have deteriorated."

Malcolm,

Your first post is irrelevant. I never denied that there is a small per capita economic benefit from mass migration, and both the 2006 Productivity Commission report on immigration and a number of studies from overseas, such as the 2008 House of Lords report, claim that it is small. They also say that the benefit mostly goes to the migrants themselves. The reason why your growthist friends want the mass migration is because the distributional effects syphon wealth up to themselves. All that the ordinary existing resident, native born Australian or migrant, gets from it is more competition for jobs, housing, public services, and amenities, with depressed wages and inflated costs for necessities of life such as housing.

<Divergence's racist assertions that migrants aren't worth an Aussie.>

Lie. I never wrote any such thing. I believe that any nation state's first responsibility is to its own citizens, but that doesn't mean that non-citizens are of lesser worth as human beings. You have a greater responsibility to your own children than to the neighbours' children.

(cont'd)

(cont'd)

<What you’re seeing with articles promoting eugenics and slashing population is the re-emergence of sociobiology in Australian life. For them, only the strongest, whitest and fittest survive in their post apocalyptic fantasy world.>

There are people out there who really are misanthropic, although I haven't encountered anyone who believes in eugenics or seen articles promoting it. So what? If you look hard enough you will find individuals who believe all sorts of strange things. You need to show that the organisations you attack actually have such policies. You haven't. It is interesting that you pick on Sustainable Population Australia (SPA), rather than, say, Australia First. SPA says absolutely nothing about eugenics or Social Darwinism. It opposes racial discrimination in immigration and believes that coercive population control does far more harm than good. It wants to stabilize our population, not slash it.

You are assuming that people are too stupid to understand that different people can want the same thing for different reasons. Evangelical Christians and feminists are both down on pornography, but wouldn't agree about much else. You are assuming that if you bray enough about racism, people will ignore the evidence on the harm that is being done to our environment and society. I am no fan of racism. It is needlessly hurtful to individuals, wastes talent, and creates animosity between groups of people. While racism makes our society uglier, what the growthists are doing, out of nothing more than shortsighted greed, is setting us up for mass extinctions and Third World misery for the bulk of our people at best and collapse at worst. Comparing a racist to one of your growthist friends is like comparing a child pinching lollies from a shop to a serial killer.

The SPA/SPP embraces Tanton and Roy Beck’s racist philosophy but they sure as hell don’t post that on their website. I believe the head of the SPA actually had Tanton stay with her some years back. It’s important to remember, that the depopulationists only pay lip service to the notion of democracy and capitalism.

In 2011, The New York Times profiled Tanton. He wrote to a large donor and was quoted in the NYT: "One of my prime concerns is about the decline of folks who look like you and me." Tanton warned a friend that, "for European-American society and culture to persist requires a European-American majority, and a clear one at that."

At the last Federal election in Australia, the SPP preferenced One Nation, the Australian Motoring Party, the Shooters and Fishers Party, Palmer's United Party, Family First and Katter's Australian Party AHEAD of the Greens.

If one voted on SPP preference guidelines, you’d support kicking out the Asians, raising tariffs, shooting wildlife in national parks, eschewing contraception, building more mines and raising jingoism to a fine art.

The genesis of the depopulation movement in its current form started with the publication of William Vogt’s ‘Road to Survival’ back in ’48. Vogt favoured sterilisation bonuses to be paid to the shiftless. His chief concerns — cheaper contraceptives and linking food aid to population control — was adopted by the SPA/SPP and is espoused by its head thinker and yam expert, Dr Jane Sullivan. Voigt showed that even though everyone shared the same “road to survival”, those that survived would be white, male and from the West.

Far from being environmentalists, watermelon lefties or fire twirling tree huggers, they are in fact hard line right wing social engineers.

Malcolm,

You have told so many lies that I refuse to believe you about Jane O'Sullivan unless you post a credible link and I can see what she actually said. I know some of these people, and the idea that they have some sort of secret agenda is just a paranoid fantasy. There is no SPA or Sustainable Population Party (SPP) policy linking food aid to contraceptives, although both want more foreign directed towards providing family planning for people who want it. SPA's foreign aid policy (recommendations to government):

"14. increase Australia's overseas development assistance
(ODA) to the 0.7 per cent of GDP [recommended by the UN], or more;
15. ensure that the family planning component within ODA is
at least 4 per cent, and that greater priority is given to other
measures that reduce the birth rate, particularly primary
health care and the education of women;"

SPP supports "enhanced foreign aid for female education and voluntary family planning."

John Tanton is a very old man who no doubt shared some of the prejudices of his generation, but he is no longer involved in running the organisations he founded. So what? George Washington kept slaves, and Teddy Roosevelt believed that women shouldn't be allowed to vote. Australia's Founding Fathers at Federation would have all been thoroughgoing bigots by our standards. One of the organisations Tanton was involved in founding, the Center for Immigration Studies, has had two black men on its board, hardly likely, if it were simply a front for white supremacy.

(cont'd)

(cont'd)

As you well know, we don't have optional preferential voting at the federal level. You no doubt were forced to give some parties with very strange ideas preference numbers well above the last. In allocating its preferences, SPP had to also consider who might have a chance of winning (i.e. doing more to trash this country and its environment) and to send a message. The LibLab wings of the Property Party are both growthist. The Greens are really a humanist party and have actually discussed changing their name on the basis that it is misleading. They have been completely hopeless on population, despite a nice sounding policy, even when they had the balance of power. Not a peep when Kevin Rudd concealed his intention to boost immigration until after the election or when Julie Gillard said she "didn't believe in hurtling down the track to a big Australia" and did the exact opposite.

The naked self-hatred and radical instrumentalism that shines through their every SPA assertion - that we are "no better than the animals" - is a classic misanthropic position. The anti-pop eugenicists love earth so much they would rid it of humans - the one specie who identifies with its beauty. Their ‘science’ is no more than group think and their guru, Malthuse, failed elementary mathematics.

Divergence and the SPA see the world through the single lens of a specific ideology. The metaphor she uses is the earth as an organism. We are all organisms existing in a defined space - units of consumption rather than self-determining, conscious and intelligent beings, each with a unique character.

This is a bastardised version of 19th century Social Darwinism, which holds up the mirror to human life and states that all we see reflects the laws of nature. In effect, natural law is invoked by the anti-people forces to legitimise the organisation of society on their terms and that includes eugenics.

The SPA and kin want to institute the paternalistic and imperialistic family planning policies that plagued India, South America and China in the 1950s and 60s. Remember the sterilization deaths of the women in India just before Xmas? Think an SPA future.

As CS Lewis said, "those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."

PS. Did you want a link to Dr Sullivan’s papers on yams?

Malcolm,

"The naked self-hatred and radical instrumentalism that shines through their every SPA assertion - that we are "no better than the animals" - is a classic misanthropic position. The anti-pop eugenicists love earth so much they would rid it of humans - the one specie who identifies with its beauty."

As a person who is vegetarian, (and I'm assuming you are not - as around 95% of Australians are not) - your view "that 'we' are no better than the animals" (that I assume you don't need, as you are better) is very easily forgotten (unless of course your'e going to eat a human for dinner).

Take the above into consideration when you ate a more recent Christmas ham lunch, have had steak for dinner, bacon for breakfast and a nice weekend 'barbie' with sausages with friends over and a few bottles of beer.

So instead of complaining, how about considering and realising the impacts of humans and the damage they are causing to the natural environment of Australia? It's doesn't breach Australian law - and the only way to limit the impacts of population is by reducing population intake - after all we can't tell people living in Australia, how many children they can or cannot have.

I didn't believe the above about the Greens even considering a name change, (and on their site it states the two alternative views on the topic were views put down as their own).

Regardless - the two views are on the Greens website - with 154 comments on the page.

I did an internet search and it's titled "A green by any other name" and it can be found at:

http://greens.org.au/magazine/national/green-by-any-other-name

What a misguided rant, Malcolm

There is a lot of material on the SPA and SPP websites, but you put up nothing to substantiate your wild accusations, because you can't. You are right up there with the people who believe that the British royal family are involved in the drug trade or that 9/11 was an inside job.

If you care about people, then you also have to care about the health of their planetary life support systems, even if you don't see other species as having any value on their own account. If you doubt that we are doing serious damage to them, see the summary in this paper from Nature (not Green Left Weekly)

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v461/n7263/full/461472a.html

open version

http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol14/iss2/art32/

also
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v486/n7401/full/nature11018.html

http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/

The problems cover a wide variety of scientific fields, but an agricultural scientist like Jane O'Sullivan (whose work with yams is likely to benefit humanity far more than anything you do) would understand the big picture a lot better than a run of the mill economist.

My own views are no secret. What I personally want is not the extinction of humanity, but a population (and general management) such that all people, not just the rich, can have good, free lives, in a healthy environment where the other species can live too.

To be honest, no one inside or outside of government cares about population rising or falling, Divergence.

When I hear anti-immigrationists such as you bleating on and on about population, I know that I’m close to the epicenter of ignorance.

Not one of the SPA has experience in demographic projections. None have worked in the APS or private industry, researching the labour market or population dynamics. None have worked in generational change, population ageing or youth unemployment. When I worked in DEEWR, the so-called anti-population movement was called the ‘tin foil hat club’. Rightly so.

Your guru, Dr Jane Sullivan, made up the figures re infrastructure in Australia from a 1986 article published at MIT. Shocker. And her research expertise is in yams. That's right, yams. Your most published thinker is a poet. And you wonder why I don’t you seriously.

The SPA’s hyper selectivity of doubly dodgy references and eye picking quotes to duck and weave around criticism, is laughable.

Indeed, last year the SPA had to institute tougher monitoring laws re members posting race hate messages on its Facebook page. You’re just a small cluster of freaks in a sideshow.

Malcolm,

<To be honest, no one inside or outside of government cares about population rising or falling, Divergence>

Nonsense. Why did the major parties put Stop Population Growth Now last on their preference list at the last SA election, behind real white nationalist parties? Why did Julia Gillard lie about not believing in a Big Australia? Why did they ignore the 1994 Australian Academy of Science Report and ignore or censor a number of other reports on our carrying capacity that they had commissioned from the CSIRO and others? They (or their FIRE sector backers) want the population growth and know that it is unpopular.

http://www.smh.com.au/national/big-australia-vision-goes-down-like-a-lead-balloon-20100803-115g7.html

<Not one of the SPA has experience in demographic projections.>

Profs. Bob Birrell and Katherine Betts? She is a member. His work is cited by SPA, although I don't know if he is a member.

So far as the folks who work for government and industry are concerned, there is a good living to be made in telling rich and powerful people what they want to hear and in justifying what they do to the masses, much like the astrologers at 17th century courts. The US, where there is less in the way of government transfers, is a good example of how this sort of advice works out for ordinary people. Most men have lower real wages than in the 1970s, and there have been massive increases in social inequality, with nearly all the benefits of economic growth syphoned up to the top.

http://www.stateofworkingamerica.org/chart/swa-wages-figure-4c-change-real-hourly-wages/

http://www.businessinsider.com.au/what-wall-street-protesters-are-so-angry-about-2011-10?op=1#lets-start-with-the-obvious-unemployment-three-years-after-the-financial-crisis-the-unemployment-rate-is-still-at-the-highest-level-since-the-great-depression-except-for-a-brief-blip-in-the-early-1980s-1

Quite a few scientists and engineers belong to SPA. Jane O'Sullivan is just one of them and no one's guru, but she has done the numbers on infrastructure. She did her own calculations for her paper, which wouldn't have passed peer review at Economic Affairs unless it were original and presented a reasonable argument.

Some people do want less immigration because they are racists. So what? Should SPA let them post illegal racial vilification on its Facebook page?

If anyone needs fitting for a tinfoil hat, it is you with your secret agendas

A few rhetorical why's there, Divergence. Always asking questions, never answering them. The major parties put the SPA last because they'd never heard of them or maybe they knew they the SPA were a front for John Tanton's disciples like Roy Beck.

Betts and Birrell are sociologists. Sounds the same: sociology and demography but quite different. Sociology allows you to pontificate on any subject you like by producing the thinnest research. As you know, both Betts and Birrell are past authors for Tanton's anti-immigration Social Contract magazine. But still, they are better than yam experts.

But only marginally better than the SPA's previous Qlds candidate, Tom Diamond, who works building the software for electronic gaming machines. Up there for thinking. Sustainable too.

I'm just about through here with the anti-pops. Enjoyed writing the articles and alerting the readership to just how riddled they are with far right froot loops, bearded gnome engineers and Dr Strangelove scientists, who for either prurient or political reasons, want to control women's reproductive organs.

Lying again, Malcolm?

<just how riddled they are with far right froot loops, bearded gnome engineers and Dr Strangelove scientists, who for either prurient or political reasons, want to control women's reproductive organs.>

There is absolutely no evidence that anyone in either of these organisations wants coercive population control, as opposed to making contraception available to people who want it. You are taking advantage of a loophole in the defamation laws to indulge in baseless slander.

From your evasiveness on the subject of planetary life support systems or what we are doing to Australia's environment, you, and maybe your friends, are pig ignorant of the threats we are facing. I suggest that instead of sneering at scientists and engineers, you try to educate yourself a bit. You might start with the Do the Math blog and the thermodynamic limits to growth.

Divergence,

So what DO you mean ? Planned parenthood ? Very gradual population stabilisation (over the next century), then very gradual reduction in the fertility rat4e (say, over the next couple of centuries ) ?

Or the killing of all first-born ? Or everybody over sixty ? Sorry, not 'killing', but 'voluntary' euthanasia ?

It will happen anyway. Can you understand that ? It's already happening in highly developed countries, an even in crap countries like Russia, although for very different reasons. Japan's population is slowly declining, with potentially catastrophic results for elderly health care, and a shrinking of the tax base, etc. n some European countries too.

The key ? Apart from affluence, the key seems to be women's education: wherever women are well-educated, they delay marriage and child-bearing, or don't do either, they tend to have far fewer kids, and even thought they are busy 10-12 hours per day, working women don't seem to have anywhere the average level of child neglect. That says something.

It's even happening in Africa: it seems that fertility rates in some African countries have halved in a couple of generations (and you have to think in terms of generations, not years, with population dynamics).

So you're banging an empty drum.

Joe

Divergence,

A cracker as usual. Jeezzz, it's like kicking puppies. Any other info you need, see my comprehensive list of articles on OLO, New Matilda and Fairfax. As for defamation, you wouldn't know the tort of defamation if it rose up and bit you. Publish and disseminate that! I will say adieu and leave you to plot your silly anti-immigration revolution from your bedroom.

Loudmouth,

Global population:

The problem is not solved. If you look at the charts and tables from the Global Footprint Network, it is clear that there are already too many people to maintain the health of our planetary life support systems and give all of them a decent quality of life.

http://www.footprintnetwork.org/images/uploads/Ecological_Footprint_Atlas_2010.pdf

We are only getting by because of the appalling poverty in most of the world and because of environmental overshoot (using up renewable resources faster than they can be replenished). The answers include allowing fertility rates to stay below replacement level, but above 1.5, for a long time, combined with better technology and management.

It is true that fertility rates have fallen in most of the world. The UN's previous medium projection had to be revised upwards, though, because fertility rates have not fallen in Africa as expected. Other projections are even less optimistic

http://news.sciencemag.org/economics/2014/09/experts-be-damned-world-population-will-continue-rise

"To wit, there’s a 95% chance the world population will be between 9 billion and 13.2 billion by the year 2100, the team concludes online today in Science. Much of that growth, it found, will likely take place in Africa, whose population is estimated to rise from 1 billion to 4 billion by the end of the century. And, unlike projections from last decade, the new graphs show a steady increase through 2100 rather than a midcentury leveling off."

Note that a lot of the increase (such as in Asia) will be due to demographic momentum (births in huge young adult generation, most deaths in relatively tiny elderly generation), not high fertility. Growth by demographic momentum can go on for up to 70 years after the fertility rate has dropped to replacement level.

There is still a great deal of unmet demand for contraception, especially in Africa, and addressing that need has been blocked by the Religious Right. Forced pregnancies are just as great a violation of human rights as coercive population control. No one is suggesting compulsion. Education, civil rights, and economic opportunities for women are also very much part of the solution, as you say.

http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/journals/j.1728-4465.2014.00382.x.pdf

(cont'd)

cont'd

Australia's population:

Here, the problem is with our elite, not our fertility rate. 60% of our population growth is from immigration and perhaps a third of our natural increase, with the rest from demographic momentum. I am not disputing that some immigration is beneficial for cultural and educational reasons, but do we really need to double our population every 43 years (1.6% population growth rate)? Note that the growth rate would probably be higher if the economy weren't in a downturn. It was 2.1% in 2008/2009 (33 year doubling time).

This very rapid growth serves the interests of our business elite, especially our FIRE sector (Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate) -- more customers, more profits from real estate and the associated lending, and a cheaper, more compliant work force, but it is of no benefit to most of the population. They just get more social inequality, more congestion and inadequate infrastructure, and more competition for jobs, housing, public services, and amenities.

The bigger high consuming population also puts more pressure on the environment. The Australian Conservation Foundation has nominated human population growth in Australia as a Key Threatening Process under the Environmental Protection Act.

http://www.acfonline.org.au/sites/default/files/resources/EPBC_nomination_22-3-10.pdf

Back in 2004, the Australian Academy of Science recommended 23 million as a safe upper limit. We are there already. Australia is a good place to live, but we aren't a big country. We are a small to medium sized country wrapped around a big desert. Why let the greedsters wreck it?