Jenny is in the early stages of labour. Being her first child it is an exciting time, the hard bits of child birth are still an academic concept for her. I am sure she'll get through it OK though, she is young and healthy. Naturally the baby she gives birth to will be special, particularly to her.

Her baby may be much more special than she realises. Today, somewhere in a hospital around the country some very round woman is about to give birth to Australia's 20 millionth citizen.

This might not seem many people for a country the size of Australia, we are roughly the size of the USA after all and it has 280 million people. Australia, however, is an arid and fragile country and our existing population has done much harm to it already. Soil salinity is devastating large sections of our arable land and deforestation is causing massive losses of valuable top soil. We are in a draught that has lasted 5 years so far.

Realistically, the sustainable population of Australia may be as low as 6 million people and yet our government is targeting an eventual population of 50 million. Such is the spell of the economic rationalists that we will destroy our country in the long term to keep a strong economy in the short to medium term. How sad.