Two stories with no real connection, except that they could conceivably involve the word “Sydney”…
First there’s this from Australia:
CANBERRA, Australia (AP) – Facing a falling birth rate, the Australian government has a simple message: Go forth and multiply. And they’re prepared to pay new parents who take up the call.
“Come on, come on, your nation needs you,” Prime Minister John Howard said Wednesday, when asked about a one-off $3,000 ($2,900 Cdn) payment for all new mothers announced by Treasurer Peter Costello in the annual budget. On Tuesday night, a smiling Costello urged reporters in Canberra: “You go home and do your patriotic duty tonight.”
The father of three suggested that two children per couple wasn’t quite enough to combat the effects of an aging population and declining birth rate in this sparsely populated nation of 20 million.
Number of asylum-seekers arriving in Australia and imprisoned in bleak internment camps every year: about 5,000. “If only a solution to this declining population thing would just, you know, wash up on the shore…”
And then this.
Wow… what were the odds? At exactly the same time as Paul Martin prepares for a federal election, the feds and Nova Scotia reach an(other) agreement on cleaning up the tar ponds.
It would be curmudgeonly to suggest that the Liberals treat Atlantic Canada as a place to neglect until they need votes, at which point they suddenly vomit money. Rude to wonder if this was coordinated with yesterday’s announcement of EI changes to address seasonal workers.
And downright ungrateful for anyone in Sydney to ask if this badly-needed announcement had been delayed at all for reasons of political timing.
