Sustainable Australia Party is an independent community movement with a science and evidence-based approach to policy.
We are a group of committed Australians from backgrounds in business, science, the environment, health, academia, demography, politics and many other ordinary citizens; from World War 2 Diggers to migrants born on every inhabited continent on Earth.
Formerly Sustainable Population Party, we contested our first (federal) election in 2013 and achieved its first (state) elected MP in Victoria in 2018. The party achieved its first elected local Councillors in NSW in 2021.
Our priorities:
- De-corrupt politics
- Protect our environment
- Stop over-development
- Slow population growth
- End the housing crisis
There's much more. See Policies.
What is sustainability?
Sustainability means meeting our own needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs. This requires us to operate our society (and economy) within safe environmental limits.
The environment is our life support system. We therefore need to put our environment first - in order to protect our health, economy and quality of life.
Also see 'Closing the sustainability loop' by party founder Cr William Bourke.
Why we exist
In line with our DE-CORRUPT POLITICS plan, Sustainable Australia Party is redefining 'growth' to mean better, not bigger.
Importantly, Sustainable Australia Party is also the only political movement to challenge the reckless political agenda of rapid growth in both resource consumption (e.g. water, energy, forests, fish stocks, etc) and population size. Instead, we prioritise growth in our health and wellbeing over business-as-usual growth in consumption and population.
Why? Australia's growing resource consumption and population size are the twin drivers of our growing environmental problems, according to our major scientific reports including the State of the Environment Report.
Australia's political system has been corrupted by vested interests, particularly powerful property developer lobby groups pushing an unsustainable real estate-driven economy.
As a result, our politicians push the folly of unlimited growth in both resource consumption and population. Among many growing problems, this corruption drives relentless overdevelopment via suburban sprawl and high-rise density, resulting in the destruction of Australia's environment and quality of life.
This necessitated the formation of a political movement based on sustainability and democracy to stop the mismanagement of our beautiful, yet arid and ecologically fragile continent - both for us and future generations of Australians.
Misrepresentation by political opponents
Based on the clear environmental science and within a broad policy platform, SAP strongly advocates against rapid population growth in Australia (and globally). This includes lowering Australia's annual immigration intake - from John Howard's post-2000 ramp up to around 200,000 per annum - back to the long term (twentieth century) average of 70,000.
As outlined in Australia's 'State of the Environment Report', population growth is clearly part of our growing problems: "Our report said that no single government or sector was responsible for the problems. They were the result of the growth and distribution of our population, our lifestyle choices, consumption patterns and the technologies we use." via The Conversation
The party (formerly Sustainable Population Party) agrees and believes that any serious plan for a sustainable Australia must include a meaningful sustainable population policy, or we undermine all of our other environmental efforts.
In terms of numbers, current rapid population growth policies of successive Liberal/National and Labor/Greens federal governments have Australia on track to grow from 19 million people in 2000 to over 40 million by 2050. At the same time, politicians are trying to reduce our total greenhouse gas emissions by around half!
It doesn't stop there... It then grows to 80-100 million by 2100!
Because of this call for lower immigration, political opponents and ideologues misrepresent SAP as 'anti-immigration' and worse. These gross misrepresentations come from parts of The Greens, Labor, online bloggers and even some journalists(!) whose ideologies deny the impact of population growth on our environment locally and globally.
SAP is pro-migrant, pro-immigration and anti-discrimination. The party boasts migrant members born on every inhabited continent on Earth, but remains steadfast in calling for a rational and mature debate on numbers, within a broader sustainability debate.
If we are to realistically lower Australia's total environmental impact, as we must, we need to both lower our per capita environmental impacts and slow population growth then stabilise our population size.
SAP founder Cr William Bourke discusses the issue here:
As said by Sir David Attenborough, "All our environmental problems become … harder - and ultimately impossible - to solve with ever more people."
Former Federal Shadow Minister for the Environment The Hon. Kelvin Thomson also addresses and rejects the misrepresentations and myths.
Also, here is an excellent short video from Canadians for a Sustainable Society, whose society faces the same extreme growth challenges we do:
Find out more
You can find our polices, core values and more in the main menu.
National Committee
Click here to view our national committee:
Constitution
Sustainable Australia Party is organised on a national basis and registered (as an incorporated association) with the NSW Department of Fair Trading and ASIC. Our constitution is based on the Department's model constitution.
Each member joins at a national level and is also entitled to membership at a local branch level (if a local branch exists).
Constitution (effective 12 Dec 2020): CLICK HERE
Privacy Policy
Find our privacy policy here.
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