Our government has recently started handing out money to new mothers to encourage a baby boom, then crowing over the increase in birth rates. This was largely at the request of the business community, but did they stop to ask themselves whether it was even a good idea? Why is it that 'business leaders' want Australia's population to go up and insist that it would be good for the economy, while most scientists think we should try to halt population growth? Do the business leaders have it wrong, or is this a case of competing goals? I think it is the latter.

more:

http://www.ozpolitic.com/population-sustainability.html

I would rather the current populace increase naturally than outsiders be brought in to prop up our skills shortage. The larger our population the stronger it is. We need to increase the gene pool and enlarge our workforce. Indonesia has more adult men of fighting age holding guns in the security, police and military fields than we have population. Longterm survival dictates growth. This country is huge and resource rich. If we had an effective Government we'd be putting our scientists to the task of greening our desert regions rather than preaching overpopulation doom and gloom.

Besides, the next big war will doubtless cull away most of us.

If we keep increasing the population then war will be inevitable.

Having lots of men for cannon fodder does not make you more able to defend yourself. Compare the US to Indonesia. What makes the US so strong is their wealth, not their population. Look at China - not long ago they were all starving. Now their economy is booming. Why? Because they can feed themselves because they brought population growth under control. They got the fundamentals right.

Greening the desert sounds like a good idea and occasionally one of our politicians suggests it. Then quickly regrets it. It is not feasible. It would cost too much. We don't even have enough water for our east coast cities. The power required would be prohibitive, and now there is the added problem of greenhouse emissions - which will make the power requried even more prohibitive in the future.

There is plenty of food to go around. Lets keep it that way, rather than relying on grandiose schemes just to keep us fed.

Freediver, I’ve said this many times on this forum – the baby bonus is rotten to the core. It is the most disgusting piece of governance we have ever seen in this country.

I curse Keating for introducing it and I curse his political opposites, Howard and Costello for embracing and increasing it.

It runs totally counter to the fundamental principle that governments should be upholding: sustainability.

It is a blatant baby-buying and vote-buying exercise. It is a full-on bribe.

The money does not have to be spent at all on the child.

The money would be much better spent on improving child education, or a host of other things.

Adjustments in population growth can be very easily made via immigration, whereas adjustments via the birth rate are much smaller and longer-term….and totally unnecessary. We should be celebrating our low fertility rate.

It is so bad that we have to ask ourselves what has happened to democracy here. Who wants a boost in the birthrate? Why? Why are we being basically repeatedly lied to by Costello with the false message that our population would go into decline without immigration? What has happened to the fundamental role of government to balance the vested-interest push for ever-greater growth from the business lobby with the responsibility to protect our future, stop overstressing our resource base and direct the country onto a sustainable basis? In short, why do successive governments pander to the continuous growth ethic, which has now been shown to be fundamentally counter-productive to our future well-being?

I suspect it is just a type of 'cultural momentum.' For many generations it has always been about growth and the limits were well over the horizon. It is taking our society a while to get it's head around the new concepts.

When the baby bonus first came out, my first response was 'why don't they just reduce our taxes instead of taking it and handing it back'. This is why I don't get the approach from the 'business community.' Maybe they assumed the money would be wasted on something else if not this. The baby bonus is a lot of money and the high taxes that are funding it are slowing down our economy far more than the low population.

Unquestioned growth was a “cultural momentum” until fairly recently. But we can hardly argue that it is any more. It has been strongly questioned for at least a couple of decades now. I’ve personally been banging my head against the proverbial continuous growth brickwall since the late 80s.

It has become patently clear to me that the vested-interest big-business lobby has prevailed, with the assistance of vested-interest governments at all levels. If this hadn’t been the case, I reckon we would be applying the final touches to a national sustainability agenda about now, rather than barely just initiating it, if indeed this is happening.

The ‘new’ concepts are not hard to understand, the core of which is balance between demand on our resource base and the ability for it to supply the goods in an ongoing manner. ie; sustainability.

The really crucial indicator that big vested interests prevail here is seen with the continuous push for rapid growth even in the face of massive water-supply problems in our cities and with climate change and greenhouse gas emissions now very high-profile concerns. I mean, if we can’t see fit to take the most obvious step towards sustainability in the current resource-stress environment, then it is blatantly obvious that there is a lot more to the story than just common sense or responsible government. And the easiest and most immediate move towards sustainability would be to reduce the rate of growth in demand for stressed resources by cutting immigration right down, to about net zero (~35 000 per annum) or lower (and abolishing the disgusting baby bonus [and sending Costello off to a nice little ice-cave in northern Greenland]).

Rather than our governments undertaking their primary duty of care of protecting our future quality of life, they are just kowtowing to their financial supporters.

Sooner or later big companies will develop greener agendas. We’re seeing that to some extent now. But the problem is that it will be too little too late. It probably already is.