Sustainability - a global opportunity

According to Consult Australia CEO Megan Motto, a new report highlights the international opportunities available for Australia to lead the way when it comes to sustainability. The right policy framework could give Australia a distinct competitive advantage and enable us to bring best practice to the global arena.

We launched Seizing the Sustainability Advantage in February after almost six months of research and collaboration. Consult Australia has had a sustainability roundtable in place for quite a few years now and it was important for us to distil the information coming from this roundtable into a focused agenda to leverage the expertise of our members.

Our membership puts us in a unique position - the firms generously support us with the intellectual expertise they employ in the sustainability space; and we benefit from a multidisciplinary approach as they span engineering, architecture, project management, planning and environmental science. The private sector is at the cutting edge in this area and we can access the depth and breadth of their thinking to develop our policy.

There are three significant outcomes that resulted from our work on Seizing the Sustainability Advantage:

1. Industry has taken a stand. I believe the private sector will always lead the charge in sustainability, as it has in every other policy debate. We need to lead the charge in an active way.
2. We have acknowledged there is an impasse and have challenged it. Australia needs a whole-of-government approach when it comes to sustainability. We need to move away from the ‘siloed’ response we currently have and move towards collaboration - between government, industry and the broader community.
3. We have demonstrated that sustainability is achievable and there are some quick and relatively painless wins that can start us on this pathway.

To date, Australia has had mixed success implementing sustainable practices compared to the rest of the developed world. On one hand, the technological and innovative intellectual client solutions we offer are up there with world best practices. But in terms of broader policy solutions our efforts are patchy. Governments elsewhere in the world have taken a stronger and, at times, more unified stance - hence the recommendations in this report.

One of these recommendations is to establish a National Sustainability Framework. We don’t currently have a cohesive framework that facilitates collaboration and the sharing of best practice across all government departments. There is fantastic work going on in pockets, but little consistency between jurisdictions. For example, the CoAG framework to assess the performance of cities is fantastic, but it is only one aspect of the sustainability agenda. We need to look at all sectors, including water, energy and waste as well.

Seizing the Sustainability Advantage also recommends establishing a Commission for a Sustainable Australia - an independent body that would provide advice to governments by evaluating the information at hand and recommending good policy.

The commission would work across government, academia, industry and the community. This is important as we need to leverage the good work already being done within all these areas and create a forum for collaboration and alignment between them.

Striving for sustainability involves both short-term goals and long-term reform. We have identified a number of quick wins in this report that would make an immediate difference. For example, we would like to see government implement policies to drive water conservation, permanently changing behaviour and attitudes to water use. In the longer term, governance and reform will be critical.

As always, reform will be led by industry stepping up. To really make change we need a supportive policy framework that will enable and offer incentives for new technologies and behaviours. We should see the international opportunity in sustainability instead of worrying about following the pack.

Businesses across the ages have succeeded by foreseeing the future and beating all the others in the race to get there. This attitude is inherent in the Australian spirit of entrepreneurialism and will be the same with sustainability. Building a better future should not be seen as a problem but rather a challenge that will enable us to place our industry and country at a competitive advantage.

*Megan Motto has been CEO of Consult Australia since December 2005. She has a double teaching degree, a Master’s Degree in Communication Management and is a graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors. Megan is currently a Director of the Australian Construction Industry Forum, Vice President of the Australian Sustainable Built Environment Council and a trustee of the Committee for the Economic Development of Australia.