Polycarp,

First wogs were greek and itallian, then wogs were asian, now wogs are Middle Eastern.

All new cultures do assimilate quite beautifully into being 'dinky die' Aussies eventually. In fact a lot of the Italian community I know have become so Australian they hate wogs too:-)

Boazycrap: << SOLUTION? aah.. let's bring in LOTS of people from other countries who:

-Don't speak our language
-Don't share our values
-Are tribal
-bla bla bla >>

You mean, like Mrs Boaz for example?

Col Rouge, you also forgot Nepotism, which was once rampant in the days of the Medici, also Cronyism, whereby a Pope seeks to perptuate his own slant on things by appointing like minded bishops to be cardinals.

David

The article was pleading for improving care for children, as more important than rattling on about quantity of babies.

I hope that people can wake up to the serious need for better child-care practices, for every child. Look around you.

Aw Polyboaz, haven’t we been over this before? Is you is just cruising for a rumble, yeah? Will the real hoodwinker please stand up!

Alright… one more time…

The 1.77 fertility rate figure refers to the average number of babies per woman.

However, there are many more young breeding people in Australia’s population than there would be if the population was stable and had an age distribution typical of a stable population.

This means that despite the personal fertility rate being well under 2, the national fertility rate is actually a bit over 2. So with net zero immigration, our population would continue to grow for quite a long time due to births alone, with this apparently below-replacement fertility rate. It will continue to grow until this age bulge evens itself out.

This bulge is present largely due to the skew in our immigration program towards young people who are having kids or soon to have kids.

“1.77 is WAY too low.”

No it isn’t!! We could actually do with disincentives to have kids, along with net zero immigration, if we were really earnest about bringing our population to a stable level as quickly as possible.

Ludwig,
I have tried, but I can’t find the figures for the mean, median and mode of the number of babies being born per adult woman/man.

About 25% of women/men don’t have any children, and a high % of women/men only have 1 child. So this must mean that a small % of women/men have 2 or more children, and it would be these families that are holding up the population numbers, or without them, the population would quickly decline.

Also the immigration rate is rather meaningless without taking into account the emigration rate, which seems to be increasing, and unfortunately those emigrating (or abandoning the boat and swimming away) often have high skill levels.