Australia faces two serious issues at present. Climate change and inequality. Inextricably linked, but not in a good way.

Australia is not serious about climate change. We should be leading the world in climate adaptation. We have abundant resources for solar, hydro, tidal and wind. Yet we concentrate on flogging coal and gas and tell ourselves it’s someone else’s problem.

Two major political parties vote against net zero, and the third is led by Mr All-is-easy PM. There is no ambition on climate.

Neither are we a country of equality or even equity. We are the least equal country in the OECD. Our tax/GDP ratio is the second lowest, so our government has too little income for social programmes. We privatise everything: health, education, housing, even defence.

We built a property industry, rather than shelter. So successfully, the top third gain ever more wealth by exploiting the lowest third, who are forced to rent from them. Whilst the income and wealth divide grows, we have the lowest percentage of social housing of any social democratic nation.

Sustainability, which is an environmental issue, is at odds with inequality, which is a social issue. The former makes the latter worse, and the triple bottom line is doomed in this country. Examples abound.

Let’s start with that property inequality. We lead the world in photovoltaic installations on houses. The rich use incentives and the tax breaks to install panels and batteries. They get lower power bills. The poor rent dodgy homes, with no PVs, from the rich landlords. They pay much more than the rich for energy. Sustainability benefits the wealthy over the poor. That's inequitable.

Speaking of houses, are we interested in raising the quality of our 10 million existing homes? Not on your life. NatHERS, the metric measurer for better thermal comfort energy, is corrupted in two ways: it only applies to new houses, and it favours the larger house over the smaller.

New houses, which are less than 2% of the total stock every year, must comply with ever-increasing star ratings. Fair enough, but it also makes new houses way more expensive than their existing poorly performing cousins. And does nothing to improve the house stock nor encourage those who own a home to improve it.

Whatever happened to mandatory disclosure that was meant to encourage improvements? Or rules that require slumlords to improve their rental properties to meet better-than-basic standards, such as minimum NatHERS levels, with PVs + battery. The rich get away with murder. Literally. 2,600 people die from cold, and 253 from heat, each year, often in poorly insulated houses. That's a scandal.

Where NatHERS does apply, it is still based on a square metre rate that benefits large houses. There is little recognition of the benefits of small houses or apartments, which by definition use less energy. Nor does it recognise the performance per person, which would be more equitable than being house-based.

Not one state, federal or local government is interested in building social housing in numbers we need, which is every one of the 1.2 million dwellings that was forecast for the next 5 years. Everyone, but only a fraction will be built to meet social sustainability.

Increased density is seen as good sustainability, and with good reason, given our world’s lowest-efficiency suburbia. But density in Sydney and Melbourne is being driven by high-rise towers, a form favoured by governments that love a big project (and ribbon cutting) but is alien to most Australians and socially disastrous.

High rises are seen as energy-efficient objects, which they’re not, and worse, are far from socially sustainable. Towers without the ground-level services, shops and landscape gardens best found in cities from Hong Kong to Paris, are close but isolated. In response, they have multiple levels of mechanically exhausted car parks.

Curiously, despite the closeness of residents, high-rise living encourages social isolation. A lift capsule to your front door belonging to a strata of 100 or more people that one barely knows; neighbours who are absent investors. How ironic that urban consolidation leads to social isolation. The answer to socially sustainable housing is to let a thousand flowers (of low-rise flats) bloom.

Speaking of apartments, recent design guides demand oversized rooms, ineffective orientations without evidence, and unused communal open spaces. These design metrics, intended for better sustainability, increase building costs. Whilst we might reward a large apartment block with a seven-star rating, next door can be an older, three-storey, non-air-conditioned walk-up flat that rates only two stars but uses half the energy. Which in reality is far more sustainable. That's inequitable.

What of transport? The difficulties of public (now privatised) transport in suburbia have led to our extraordinary rate of car ownership, now an EV for the rich, or at least those with a garage or driveway. But those living in higher density, often the poor in older terrace and apartment rentals, have no access to on-site charging and no EV. It’s a form of sustainable apartheid that the government is slow to address.

And of carbon offsets? On the one hand, land is cleared, often illegally, as it is seen as an entitled ‘right’, with inspectors attacked or, in one case, even shot dead. On the other hand, forests are promised to be planted as carbon offsets, but often not. We are world champions at deforestation and laggards at reforestation to capture carbon. That's a sham.

Finally, the tricky issue of migrants. Often vilified for driving up house prices (untrue), stealing jobs (untrue), being a drag on social services (untrue), and being an impediment to growth (also untrue). What’s rarely mentioned is Australia offers a better lifestyle than the poorer country they migrate from. Longer lives lived at better standards. More energy dense, but more socially progressive. In the world’s carbon growth, what’s the cost/benefit?

As sustainability becomes more technocratic, it overrides the possibilities for better equality. Is it enough for us just to sustain what we have? Surely, we should be making life better for all, not making it more comfortable for the few. Sustainability and inequality are increasingly at odds, to the point that sustainability, as it is practised in Australia, is:

Counterproductive.

Not enough.

* These ideas, and more, are being canvassed in a keynote speech/discussion with Rob Stokes (former minister, chair of FHA) at the Sustainability Summit next Wednesday. Register here.

Cross-Sections are Friday musings from Tone Wheeler, following on from the Tone on Tuesday columns. Remember: Amateurs draw plans, professionals draw sections; never at cross purposes.

Tone Wheeler

Let’s connect!