Its not and I was making my point, but I cant see what my point about aussie families having the rights to have children versus us emmigrating has to do with money you havent answered my point at all. Do you think its ok to say no you can only have 2 children then a family of 4 or more move over from another country. No body has given me a justifiable answer to this.

Swerv-o I get your point about water globally but I thought we were talking Australian drought, no point in having water in UK if we cant drink it here.

Lets just agree to disagree on this point.

Jo

Sorry Jo, I just felt like playing devils advocate bacause I thought you jumped in with the "hypocrite" comment a bit too easily!

I don't think anyone has been saying that people can't have 2, 4, 6 or however many ferals they wish, just that if the govt wants to save water, it's a bit off to sponsor higher childbirth rates at the same time...

There have always been droughts in Australia.

For example, there were major droughts in Victoria in 1865-1866, 1914-1915, 1919, 1922-1923, 1938-1939, 1943-1945, 1967-1968, 1972-1973, 1976-1978, 1982-1983, and beyond. The droughts won't stop.

The well-known "Federation Drought" lasted from 1895-1902 and was severe. It killed nearly half of all Australian sheep and just under half of all Australian cattle. The population of Australia in 1901 was 3.7 million.

So why the resistance to using nuclear power to fuel desalination? Nuclear fuel is cheap to transport, and all of the major population centres are next to the sea.

Take it were still friends then.

Jo

Well, I don't suppose we'll be swapping spit in the showers, but yes!

Nothing in principle it's a great idea. I think the big no no from the electorate is due mainly to fear of anything nuclear. There's also the problem of safely disposing of spent fuel, though we could ship it all to the U.K for processing

I good old fashioned debate blows away the cobwebs.

Jo

In your ''jurisdiction'' maybe(!)

I've missed loads of this on the way home from work, but I'm not denying anybodys right to have as many kids as they like.

What I think is off is that the govenrment is throwing money at people to have them when they blatantly know that the infrastructure isn't available to support them. That money could be better spent on building, then when the systems are in place, you can then start to encourage population growth.

All growth and development needs to be sustainable. What's the point in having a boat load of new kids now, and then in 20 years time have to limit childbirth like the chinese, because there's not enough water to go around?

It needs to be done in the right order, and I don't think the govt is doing that. It's just handing out money in a pretty cynical attempt to win votes.

S

Isn't the primary function of every government simply to get itself re-elected?!

I thought it was screw everyone, then get itself re-elected inspite of the overt screwing...

S

Yes. Absolutely. This is the major flaw in democracy. If you look at the American system, for example, many of the problems, especially in foreign policy, are caused because the president can run for office twice. If he was limited to one term, things would be very different.

At least they know when their leader IS going to go...

S

True, but you'd still know that if he were limited to one term. I think the FF allocated two terms to the executive for reasons of stability and continuity, but it was a mistake. El Presidente should have one term in office, then all change.

As for our system (Brit or Aussie) the PM can go on and on and on and on and....