On Wednesday Danna Vale told Parliament she was
sorry for her “we are almost aborting ourselves out of
existence” warnings of a Muslim menace.

But is she? “I do hope that
this clarifies in some way what I was trying to say in a very clumsy way in a
live interview the other day, for I deeply regret any offence that might have
been taken by members of the Australian Muslim community,” she said.

Either Vale isn’t sorry – or is still clumsy. This
email went whizzing around the House from her office yesterday:

Good
afternoon Members and Senators,

I have
included below an opinion piece by Mark Steyn in today’s The Australian
newspaper for your information.

Kind
Regards,

Aaron

Aaron
Findlay
Electorate Officer
Office of Danna Vale MP
Federal Member for Hughes

“The backbencher raises
legitimate questions about demographic changes,” Canadian conservative stirrer
and MGM musical buff Steyn wrote.

Legitimate questions – but do his
demographics add up?

Even if every Muslim woman of childbearing age in
Australia had, er, a good Catholic family – 12 children or so – it would be a
very, very long time before their percentage of the Australian population could
measure up to the yardsticks Steyn uses.

The evidence suggests that – just as with other ethnic groups – as the
level of affluence increases the number of children decrease within Muslim countries
and populations. Ditto with the trend that the higher the level of education of
women, the lower the birth rate. Just have a look at someoftheselinks.

Here’s a particularly interesting quote from the last link, the
Australian Review of Public Affairs:

The Australian Muslim population is noteworthy for its
diversity in
terms of ethnicity, national origins, language, and class. This
diversity is
all the more remarkable because, at around 300,000, Muslims make up
about 1.5% of the Australian population, a share quite disproportionate
to the
place they assume in mainstream apprehensions…