We can’t keen overpopulating forever

Alan Baird writes: Re. “Taking an axe to government programs” (Monday). Onya Peter North! Dead right! All worthy cuts that I would love to see. For once I’m not being sarcastic.

Rather less enthusiastic about Peter Matters’ old myth about constant immigration for ever and ever, always chasing the tax pool for pensions, always requiring ever-increasing generation size. Has anyone ever thought about the term sustainable? It’s supposed to mean, “able to keep on doing what you’re doing for ever and ever amen!” As if.

Let’s be clear about this. Are we looking to immigration to keep increasing the pool of money for future pensions, or are we trying to solve the problems of overpopulation in the rest of the world? If it’s the latter, it’s quite simple. We import a couple of million from every country in the Middle East, Africa, etc, etc, and we’ll coincidentally have groaning workloads in infrastructure, housing, transport, education, etc, and everybody will be forever happy.

But not this little duck. Scratch a demographer or politician and you’ll find an enthusiastic “populate and perisher” underneath. And all because they worship at the altar of perpetual growth. For example, I’m very willing to get something going for the education of girls all around the world rather than facing a perpetual increase in pressure on the earth just because religious loonies, economic knuckle-draggers and population flat-earthers can’t see beyond their short-term sexual politics or even shorter-term budgets.

Razer cuts straight to it

Wendy Gallagher writes: Re. “Razer: don’t buy into ‘self-esteem’ feminism” (yesterday). Thank you, Helen Razer. Lisa Wilkinson’s speech at the Andrew Olle lecture was breathtaking. She fronts a TV morning program  fixated on looks, celebrity and all other “cerebral” matters of note. She plays to the nonsense, sits on a couch handing out advice on all matters (which a producer dreams up) looking as serious as she can to muster the impression of sincere understanding on all issues presented.

Dressed to the nines, stilettos at the ready, hair and makeup perfect, regaling the ungraciousness of said audience to comment on her appearance, and yet gave another lecture on the unfairness of her sisters being  judged on appearance, because — yes,  she actually said this — “we are journalists”. DAH !

Keeping up appearances

Mary Sinclair writes: “Former RBA member deepens mystery around THAT $9 billion” (Friday). Bernard Keane and Glenn Dyer explained why Treasurer Joe Hockey increased the Reserve Fund:

“If former Liberal treasurer Peter Costello had taken dividends from the RBA at a similar average to Swan ($1.5 billion a year rather than Costello’s average of $3 billion a year), the RBA’s Reserve Fund would be extremely healthy.

“Put another way, if Swan had taken dividends from the RBA at the same level as Costello, the Reserve Fund would now be empty.”

Isn’t it obvious that Hockey wants sufficient capital in the Reserve Fund to be able to take substantial dividends each year, certainly more than Swan took,  to make his budget look healthy?

Hit them, baby, one more time

David Lennon writes: Re. “Richard Farmer’s chunky bits” (yesterday). So Britney scares pirates? That is nothing; our Kylie scares foxes, and where I live that’s much more useful.