Good Evening Ladies and Gentleman.

Every day we hear in the news that immigration is the future of Australia; it will create new markets and increase demand, thus generating more jobs. And this is true. High immigration rates are a politicians paradise; they are able to endlessly claim that the economy is growing because, of course, more people are being inputted into the country. But Australias population growth, combined with our unwillingness to change our lifestyle, means that in the not so distant future our country will be unable to support its people. Australias population is increasing by 1.8% - around 250 000 people every year due to natural increase and immigration. And with new developments in medicine, our life expectancy is continually growing as well leaving us with mounting concerns over the budgetary implications of a large elderly population supported by an insufficient number of taxpayers. This leads to a fine balance between enough population growth to support the ageing population and so much growth that it becomes unsustainable. Australias population is growing and growing, with an alarming trend towards urbanisation. As the New Zealand Herald reported, Australias big cities are eating the nations future as they spread out across shrinking farmland, increase pollution, threaten water supplies and hit the quality of life. Sydney alone grows by around 1000 people every week! This urban sprawl creates more and more demand for food, water and energy; resources which may be in questionable supply in the future. Water is humanitys most basic need yet in the last El Nino drought period, many of Australias dams were down to around 25% of capacity, and stringent water restrictions were imposed. In the likely event of an upcoming drought, at least there will be the new desalination plants. But in the meantime, Sydney Water customers are paying $500 000 a day in availability fees. Without phosphate and nitrate fertilisers we would be unable to feed even our current population, yet their continued availability seems uncertain, with erratic supply, and prices which are sure to increase with the rising price of energy. Moreover, as urban sprawl increases it consumes suburbs such as Rouse Hill, Ryde or Kogarah, which once supported agriculture or orchards. Despite Australias size, the arable land which we are subsuming into cities is limited. As the Immigration Departments Long Term Implications report states; The security of production of food from Australia (and imported from overseas) is in question. But the unsustainability of Australias growing population isnt our only population isnt our only problem. As it stands, Australias resources are only capable of supporting another 5 million or so people, but if we lived a more sustainable lifestyle this may not have been the case. On the whole, we, the population of Australia, are amongst the most wasteful people in the world. In 2004, Australians threw away $5.3 billion of food more than 13 times the $386 million donated by Australian households to overseas aid agencies. On a per capita basis,

Australia is one of the worlds largest polluters. The 24.4 tonnes of carbon dioxide that each Australian emitted in 2012 were topped only by 5 countries Bahrain, Bolivia, Brunei, Kuwait and Qatar. Our per capita emissions are nearly twice the OECD average and more than four times the world average. Australia has been ranked the 8 th least sustainable country on the planet. We are rapidly consuming Australias natural resources and depleting her environment. So what can we do to ensure that Australia will still be a great place to live for the rest of our lives, for our childrens lives and for their childrens lives? Well, to start with, we cannot simply ignore the problem of sustainability and hope that it goes away, and we should not abolish the few policies, such as the carbon tax, that actually deal with the problem of our unsustainability. We need to be actively encouraging new and innovative measures in energy and food production. What if we based our diet on kangaroo meat rather than beef; meat which is not only much better for you, but which also thrives in a habitat native to Australia, thus restoring some of Australias biodiversity? What if every person invested in solar panels on the roofs of their homes; an investment which will pay itself off in the future through saved energy bills or even income through supplying energy back into the grid? If we are to continue to grow at anywhere near the rate which we currently are, we must radically change our lifestyle.