Editorial

Among the plethora of minor parties fielding candidates in Australia's 2016 federal election was a relative newcomer called Sustainable Australia. Formed in 2010 and campaigning with the slogan ‘Better, not bigger’, the party's policy centrepiece calls for Australia to slow its population growth through a combination of lower immigration, changes to family payments, and the withdrawal of government agencies from proactive population growth strategies (Sustainable Australia, n.d.). At a global level, the party also calls for Australia to increase foreign aid with a focus on supporting women's health, reproductive rights and education. Like most minor parties, its candidates polled poorly, attracting too few votes to secure seats in the Senate. But in the ensuing months, the South Australian branch of The Greens broke from the national party platform by proposing the aim of stabilising South Australia's population within a generation (The Greens SA, 2017). Just this August, Australian business entrepreneur Dick Smith launched a ‘Fair Go’ manifesto, similarly calling for reductions in Australia's population growth to address rising economic inequality and a “decline in living standards” (Dick Smith Fair Go Group, 2017).