Demographers at Waikato University's Population Studies Centre say that unless New Zealanders start breeding more, New Zealand's fertility rate will slip below replacement level. And? I don't actually see why this would be a Bad Thing. Or why a growing population would be a Good Thing. Or indeed, why this should be any concern of government (or indeed anyone) at all.
Our fertility rate is an aggregate of people's individual reproductive choices. And those choices are fundamentally personal and the sole domain of the individuals concerned. It is no business of government how many kids I or anyone else has. It is no business of government whether any of us breed or not. Government simply has no legitimate interest in what goes on in our bedrooms, or in whether those activities result in children or not. It is simply None of Their Fucking Business.
(The same applies BTW to the rest of you. It's None Of Your Fucking Business either...)
As for the idea of "family friendly" policies, it is one thing to ensure that everyone gets a good start in life, or to enable people to follow their life-plans whatever those plans might be (which are IMHO what Working for Families aims to do). It is quite another to try and dictate what those plans should be, or try and use "incentives" to usurp people's most meaningful and personal decisions. The idea that we would do the latter to affect people's reproductive choices is as repugnant as it would be for their religious or sexual ones. And it is not something any government should be contemplating.
