 | Government to Reopen South Australian Refinery? | TOD: Australia/New Zealand | The Bullroarer - Wednesday 30 January 2008 |  |
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The whole concept of quotas is vexed with problems which will likely prove impossible to solve to everyone's satisfaction.
I continue to believe that universal carbon taxes are the way to go - with WTO rules punishing countries which don't cooperate.
Who wants to bet on when (or if) the next round of Kyoto will be successfully concluded ?
As for rules about water allowances or number of kids - please tell me you aren't serious. Please.
Perhaps not a quota, but maybe no subsidies/tax cuts for babies!
Yes - get rid of the "baby bonus" etc - thats fine.
IIRC our birth rate is under replacement rate anyway, so if you wanted to stabilise Australia's population, the easy way to do it is to cut immigration back to the appropriate level.
And if you want to stabilise the world's population, you'd fund efforts in the developing world to improve women's education, give them access to contraception and to become economically independent - which are the most effective ways of achieving a manageable birth rate.
I've always thought that there was something strange about promoting "Australian Babies" instead of upping the immigration intake if the objective was population growth...
The other measures you mention are known to produce (or are at least correlated with)lower birth rates... and these measure are sadly resisted for that very reason, by those with other agendas/ideas.