‘Pill Threatens Aust.'

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30977, 5 February 1966, Page 15

‘Pill Threatens Aust.'

(N.Z. Press Assn.—Copyright) MELBOURNE, Feb. 4. The increasing popularity of oral contraceptives among young girls and married women was a threat to the future of Australia, according to a Victorian doctor.

The doctor Issued this warning in the “Medical Journal of Australia.” He is Dr. Victor Wallace, of Hughesdale, who believes that the campaign in favour of the use of contraceptives has gone too far. "We are severely handicapped in many ways because of our very small population,” he writes. “There are so few of us to do so much. “We could build a great civilisation here if we had the will to do so, but we are in danger of losing this country to an aggressive Asiatic power.

“We are dependent upon

the United States of America because We have such a tiny population. “We are weak and vulnerable because we have failed to reproduce our kind sufficiently and prepare our defences adequately.” Dr. Wallace claims that the low birth-rate is not caused by an absence of desire for children.

Couples who would like four children encounter one serious economic and social obstacle after another and eventually decide to have only two, or one or none. He accuses the Federal

Government of doing very little about this vital national problem. All to motherhood should be removed, he writes, and makes the following suggestions:

Good citizens with children should be strongly favoured in the fields of housing, taxation and employment. Generous marriage loans should be granted and be completely paid off with the birth of the fourth child.

Four or five-child families should be made fashionable again.

“Unless the Federal Government introduces an effective policy without delay our already small population will dwindle so that the Australian people will fall easy victims to a determined Asiatic invader, and future historians will refer to the European civilisation which once existed here,” he concludes.