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Immigration? No thanks. I'll take fertility--and make that a double! Priya Saratchandran warns against population policy that repeats past mistakes.

Publication: Arena Magazine
Publication Date: 01-APR-05 		Format: Online
Delivery: Immediate Online Access
Full Article Title: Immigration? No thanks. I'll take fertility--and make that a double! Priya Saratchandran warns against population policy that repeats past mistakes.(declining population and shortage of labor in Australia)

Article Excerpt
... one for your husband, one for your wife and one for your country.

Peter Costello, 11 May 2004

Apocalyptic headlines scream 'Nation's Fertility Crisis' and 'Populate or Perish'. If you're an Australian woman in your thirties, you'd be forgiven for feeling like a moving target. And if current Federal Government policy is anything to go by, that feeling won't go away anytime soon.

The Government doesn't have a coherent population policy, but it's making choices it hopes will correct the predicted population decline. Choices have been made and priorities set. The policy winner in the Federal Government's population stakes is fertility, as seen by the 2004 'breeding budget', where the Government introduced a host of tax benefits targeting families. The cherry on top was the lump-sum Maternity Payment of $3000 per newborn child after 1 July 2004, with an in-built increase to $4000 in July 2006 and to $5000 in July 2008. But is fertility the solution to Australia's ageing population and the problems that come with it, such as the skills shortage?

According to a number of prominent...

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