Population target?

United Future's Peter Dunne thinks that NZ needs five million people by 2015. All I can say is why?

Does Dunne feel inadequete as a member of a society with a mere four million people? Does he need the extra million to restore his self-esteem, and help him stand proud in front of people from Denmark, Finland and Ireland? This seems like the same sort of silly penis-size war we play over OECD rankings - "Look! We're in the top five countries in the world for population growth!" (along with Niger, Somalia and Yemen).

Currently Statistics NZ thinks that the population will peak at 4.8 million in the mid 21st century. I really see no reason to hurry this along, and certainly no reason to charge towards some imaginary try-line as if population growth was a competition.