I'll always agree with Tim Murray's views on population, but I don't think a one-child policy a la China or any other totalitarian country is advisable.

Much better to stop immigration altogether, and get rid of all non-citizens other than those working here temporarily.

Removal of baby bonuses and all financial help, along with taxpayer help for first home buyers would also be a good accompaniment to stopping immigration to see how things go before trying anything as drastic as a one-child policy.

Sure there is nothing really wrong with having one child in a family. Happens all the time. It is a matter for the family. No government should intervene. Whether a family that has more than one child should be made to feel guilty over vague charges that they are somehow ruining the lives of people in developing countries is another matter.
The present troubles of developing countries are most emphatically not the result of people having too many children in the developed world. If the author wants to allege this then he should draw a clear link.
I strongly agree with the suggestion that economic growth solves a lot of problems, despite attempts by the author to dismiss that suggestion. More economic growth in developing countries would solve a lot more problems than any attempt to limit population in Australia.
Economic growth is putting a strain on resources? What strain, where? What resources? Oil? Iron ore? For every scare story that can be presented about strain on resources there are plenty of counter arguments..

Tim writes

'Surely extinction is too high a price to pay for parental self-indulgence'

I would suggest that couples who choose not to have children are far more self indulgent than those who care for and bring up children. Why on earth are we trying to save the whale, the near extinct tadpoles and then claim we are overpopulated. To many people blinded by Green propaganda where humans are the enemy of the planet. This article is absolute crap (to put it kindly).

Runner says "Why on earth are we trying to save the whale, the near extinct tadpoles and then claim we are overpopulated."

Um, isn't one of the points exactly that the current Sixth Great Extinction of species is directly due to human population pressure? I fail to see your logic here, so please enlighten me. Thanks.

[Trav apparently is not aware of the concept of demographic momentum, or of population overshoot.]

OK so someone fill me in on the concepts and their relevance to the topi

Thanks to all the doomists who contribute to these sites, there seems to be a coming together of views of anti-immigration racists, old-fashioned eugenicists, anti-(other people's)-population, infanticide of other people's children, cave-and-kelp environmentalists, and I suspect, euthanasia advocates.

I'm personally comfortable with:
* reduction of greenhouse gas emissions to ecologically sustainable levels;
* with sustainable living, along with sustainable development and use of resources;
* with increased immigration, particularly from the 'Third World', we need this for increased inter-marriage which is so obviously necessary to invigorate our Anglo population;
* with the decriminalisation of suicide and the current penalties for murder (i.e. euthanasia and infanticide);
* and for far greater funding of women's education around the world, since lower fertility eventually correlates with women's educational levels.

There was a time when Africa made up half the world's population, and I hope that, with present levels of fertility, they will soon re-acquire that population share. So I am also quite comfortable with:

* the current rate of growth in the African population, provided it is paired with massive infrastructural, educational and economic development, and
* increased migration from Asia and Africa to Europe, the US and Australia, in order to rejuvenate our populations, and move us away from tired old racist and anti-modernist policies which seek either to take us back to Menzies' fifties, or further back to a Medieval Golden Age - or even further back to a tribal past.

Hopefully, this will set a few cats of reality amongst the Utopian pigeons.

Joe