Vote for an Only Child

Vote for just me.

The Herald has Keith Locke in damage control mode today as he tries to maintain that the Green’s “family” policy does not imply a move towards China’s “one child” policy. The Greens, of course do not have a family policy per se, they have a population policy. They are constitutionally incapable of thinking in units as small as a family. Locke says:

““There is no way the Green Party would ever dictate to any parent how many children they should have,” he said. “Every child is a loved and wanted child. It would also be racist to try to dictate family size, given that the various ethnic groups in our society have different birthrates.””

Homepaddock points out that Locke is being both naive (assuming all children are loved) and racist (assuming it’s somehow racist to dictate family size to other ethnic groups, but, presumably, not to pakeha). He is also flat wrong in his denial. The Greens’ population policy states these key principles:

“3. The population cannot be increased beyond its capacity to offset its greenhouse gas emissions.”

Now, while no one argues that a population should overwhelm its natural resources, the Greens appear to have overlooked the fact that New Zealand is still a largely empty country which could easily absorb three times the current population as long as our ailing infrastructure is upgraded alongside our population increase. But the policy makes its point more definitely in later principles:

“6. Informed decisions about family size and spacing will be made by the parents concerned.
7. A stable population is desirable to minimise negative impacts on infrastructure and resources.”

So principles of family sizing and a stable population do not indicate that you would like to control population growth, Keith? David Farrar at Kiwiblog points out that our birthrate is 1.99 which is already below the replacement fertility rate. So, Locke is either proposing stopping immigration, or he is proposing reducing our birthrate in order that we may take in more immigrants. We find that the Greens propose the latter as they say they will -

“Retain spare capacity so that as and when needed, we can manage the settlement of returning citizens and climate-change immigrants/refugees with the resources available.”

So there you have it. New Zealanders must breed less so that we can make room for returning Kiwis and climate-change refugees. What an incredible load of garbage! It demonstrates the limited resource mentality of the Greens beautifully. Little or no thought is given to forward planning for an increased population because a bigger population would add to “society’s demands on nature”. As the Greens would indeed be reluctant to institute a one child policy (mainly because Kiwis would not let them), their plan for our future appears to consist of moaning about “society’s demands on nature” while the population overtakes the capacity of our current infrastructure.

Dynamic, to say the least.

I should point out that a static population will cause enormous problems in health. A static population means an aging population which means a reduction in the taxable, income-earning population. Managing an elderly population with a dwindling health budget is not one that appeals to me. Although, of course, we will all die much sooner and, therefore, save the planet.

Perhaps that’s the Greens’ plan?

PS. Zen Tiger also finds the policy repugnant and goes all Godwin on us. Love the picture of Mugabe!

Related posts: