First letter of the year in The Age, 28/1 :-). A response to an opinion piece about the book Overloading Australia, the subject of “Population Australia’s ‘big threat’ ”, The Age, 24/1.
It’s all about impact
For Brigid Delaney (Comment & Debate, 27/1) to imply that those who oppose excessive immigration are racist misses the point of the book Overloading Australia. The reason for limiting numbers is that Australia (or any nation) cannot continue to import huge numbers of people – no matter where they come from – without harmful social and environmental impact (already evident in Victoria). If we want to keep Australia liveable in future, we must reduce population growth.
– Suzanne McHale
Growth is the issue
Brigid Delaney trots out the usual spurious arguments against Overloading Australia.
The authors focus on immigration simply because it is the main driver of population growth, and it is population growth, not immigration per se, that is the problem.
No one who supports the basic thrust of the book denies that immigrants have made a contribution to this nation. No one wants to end immigration.
What we want is immigration that approximates emigration in size so you still get a flow of new people that can enrich our society, but not so many as to overload it in environmental terms. We are certainly on a trajectory for overload, if we have not passed it already. We should stop living “high on the hog” but, as well as getting off the hog, we need to get our numbers stabilised (and even reduced) as soon as possible.
– Jenny Goldie, president, Canberra region, Sustainable Population Australia, ACT
Sheila Newman also has a response on her blog: “Growthist responses to Overloading Australia”.
“Eight Is Enough”, New York Times, 27/1. A woman recently gave birth to 8 premature infants, no doubt with the assistance of fertility treatment. There is an option to reduce (abort) the extra foetuses. Creating such pregnancies is an irresponsible use of medical science as it puts great strain on the mother, as well as the taxpayer-funded medical system that is obligated to take care of the usually ill and sometimes defective infants. I agreed with this comment:
There is no way that people who push litters of fragile humans into our nation, society, and ecosystem should be accoladed and rewarded. I am weary of paying for this sort of thing, then facing demands that I also jump up and down and coo.
Repeal the tax deduction for adding more humans to the planet. If people want to be rewarded for breeding, then let them prove when their ONE kid is 25 that they raised a productive, healthy contributor to society. Then we can pay them a successful parenting annuity for 18 years amounting to what the tax break/deduction would have been.
I’m sick of the baby fetish, and I’m sick of pretending. Natalism has become our nation’s most disturbing fetish.
– Michael
I hate to think of the damage such a pregnancy inflicts upon a woman’s body:
The mother was initially admitted to the hospital at about her 23rd week of pregnancy – which is fairly early – because she was suffering from severe back strain. “Her stomach was huge, indescribably huge,” Dr. Henry said. “At a certain point, we don’t even measure.”
As an example of such damage, a photo montage (possibly NSFW) of a woman who is “merely” pregnant with triplets!
