National Sustainability Council launches Sustainable Australia report

The National Sustainability Council has used the launch of its first public report to challenge Australians from all walks of life to become involved in a national conversation about the kind of Australia we want for ourselves and future generations.

Sustainable Australia Report 2013: Conversations with the Future provides the evidence behind the trends, issues and challenges affecting Australia’s environment, society, economy and collective wellbeing. It is the first report of its kind in Australia.

Launching the council’s inaugural report, Professor John Thwaites, Chair of the National Sustainability Council, said: “Sustainability is about more than the environment, and it’s about more than just the economy. It is about the sort of society we want to live in and hand on, it is about our health, our education, our happiness and the environment we live in.

“This report shows that overall, Australia is a great place to live, and across most indicators we are tracking well. We’ve had a sustained period of economic growth with low unemployment, improvements in health and life expectancy, and most of us live in safe communities.

“We are doing all of this while developing a genuinely multicultural country with people from all over the world bringing their skills and enriching our culture.

“We have also seen some success stories in the environment. Air quality is good and we have reduced water consumption by 35% in the decade to 2011.

“Of particular significance is that over the past 20 years Australia has experienced large improvements in educational attainment. By 2012, 80% of people aged 20-64 had completed Year 12, a vocational or higher qualification, up from 60% in 1994. The proportion of women with a bachelor degree or above has risen from 21% in 2002 to 30% in 2012.

“However, one of the things we think that many people will find concerning is that inequality and disadvantage - the gap between rich and poor - has been rising. In 2010, the poorest 20% of households held just 1% of household wealth, while the wealthiest 20% held 62%. Inequality and disadvantage affect individuals and communities and multiple types of disadvantage can interact, leading to complex impacts on wellbeing that are difficult to address.

“Inequality also raises issues about fairness,” he said.

Other challenges discussed in the report relate to food and agriculture, education, climate change, regional Australia, sustainable cities, sustainable growth and prosperity through innovation and growth and the environment. Some that are set to have a significant impact on the next generation of Australians include:

• our ageing population, which is expected to see the number of Australians aged 65 and over to increase by 84% over the next 20 years, placing significant budgetary pressures on the age pension, health costs and aged care facilities;
• the need to plan for growing cities and changes in traditional work and family roles;
• global population growth and the huge growth of the middle class in Asia which will place massive pressure on energy, water and food systems but should continue to drive demand for our commodities, agricultural products and a range of services;
• new technologies that will be integrated into our daily lives, providing opportunities for innovation, new jobs and medical breakthroughs while impacting on our social relationships and family life;
• climate change, which will increase the risk of drought, bushfire and extreme weather events. Australia must become more efficient in the use of resources and energy, more respectful of nature, and adapt to the consequences of climate change;
• the widening gap between the supply of higher-level skills and industry demand, with implications for Australia’s productivity performance.

“Sustainability is something we all have responsibility for. The decisions and actions we take over the next 10 years will determine whether or not the next generation of Australians will become the first in recent history to be worse off than their parents and grandparents. We can’t take it for granted that the future will take care of itself.

“We hope that this report will stimulate conversations in kitchens, in coffee shops, in offices and over dinner about the kind of place Australians want to be calling home in 20 years and beyond,” he said.

Professor Thwaites stressed that the report is not intended to be the final word on sustainability: “Between now and 2015, the council intends to advise government on how to improve the sustainability indicators that have been used in this report, and our key data sets. We also hope that our 2015 report will reflect an even richer set of information, drawing on our conversations with the Australian community about their ideas for the future they want.”