After smacking, tuckshops and showers, now it is your number of kids

The Greens, proud champions of regulations for showers, have their brightest and boldest policy – a zero population policy.

In fact it is even worse than that – they want negative population growth so NZ can have room for Pacific Island climate change refugees.

has the best comment:

Act Rodney Hide said it was a first step toward zero-population growth. He suggested that perhaps if parents planted a field of trees, they might be able to have twins.

Yes, you will have to build up enough carbon credits in order to get permission to have a child.

And Tariana:

Maori Party co-leader Tariana Turia said it was a case of “middle-class” Greens trying to tell others how big their families should be.

“Tell them to go to China where there is a One Child policy. But don't start trying to control fertility and social engineering like that here.”

The defence:

Greens population spokeswoman Metiria Turei yesterday denied it was an attempt to discourage people from having large families. She said awareness of the impact their families had on resources and the environment would allow parents to make an “informed decision” about their family size.

For fuck's sake. Having kids is the biggest decisions parents make anyway. Having Metira tell families they need to make an “informed” decision is as offensive as laughable. What she means is she wants people to feel guilty if they have kids as kids use up scarce resources.

There is a problem with over population globally, but for most of Europe the problem is under population – not enough children are being born to replace those dying.

The replacement fertility rate is 2.1 children per woman. Current fertility rates according to the UN are:

  • Greece 1.33
  • Russia 1.34
  • Germany 1.36
  • Italy 1.38
  • Canada 1.53
  • Australia 1.79
  • UK 1.82
  • France 1.89
  • NZ 1.99
  • US 2.05

So NZ already has a declining population growth from fertility, being under the replacement rate of 2.10. And we are at the top end of European countries. So where is the global population growth happening:

  • Niger 7.19
  • Palestine 5.09
  • Tonga 3.83
  • Pakistan 3.52
  • Saudia Arabia 3.35
  • India 2.81
  • Libya 2.72

So let's make sure we have this right. NZ already has a shrinking population from fertility. But in order to allow India, Libya, Saudia Arabia, Pakistan and the Niger to carry on with their over-populating, NZ families should have less children.

The Greens policy even includes:

Facilitate the development of regional population plans, in partnership with local tangata whenua.

So what the fuck will a regional population plan be?

They also advocate:

Support initiatives to raise awareness amongst parents and potential parents regarding the issue of sustainable global population levels.

What this means is taxpayer funded bureaucrats working on pamphlets and seminars to frighten parents off having more kids. Can you imagine every school in NZ having some dour faced do gooder preaching to all the kids they they should not have children, in order to save the planet.

How about a nice pamphlet “About your foetus and save the planet today” – have that in every doctor's surgery.

The Greens are saying of course it will be up to each family to decide for themselves how many children they have – but nevertheless they want to run education programmes and awareness initiatives to help those parents make the right decisions.

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